


The Box Set

by feldman, Thassalia



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Amphibians, Baked Goods, F/M, Fuckbuddies, Marking, background threesome, bespoke tailoring, kink as communication, male submission, scientific ethics
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-31
Updated: 2018-05-12
Packaged: 2019-01-27 10:52:41
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 15
Words: 113,595
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12580132
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/feldman/pseuds/feldman, https://archiveofourown.org/users/Thassalia/pseuds/Thassalia
Summary: Pain for pleasure’s sake, stripteasing down to the soul--maybe for these two, the real kink is trust, the real danger is catching feelings.  A story of cookies and monsters and love in real life.





	1. Collected B-Sides

### Collected B-Sides

~*~

_Let me take your hand_

_I'm shaking like milk_

\-- **The Cure**

~*~

Bruce had joined the fight at sundown, staying hulked out past dawn. The mission debrief had been short and reassuring, which was the only reason he'd stayed awake long enough to shower before falling across his bed.

Now it's afternoon, and he's hungry and out of sorts, wandering through a Tower that feels deserted. He’s still unsure what to do with himself after a Code Green when he can crash in his own bed after a job well-done, when he doesn't have to grieve and run and loathe himself.

The absence of that part of the cycle leaves him antsy, and strangely sociable.

JARVIS reports that the only other person in residence and awake is Natasha. In the debrief she'd reported flying the quinjet in surgical strikes all night; from the Other Guy he has images of sharing airspace with her as he leapt around the compound, before Stark blew it sky high.

Bruce heads to the tactical room to see if she'd like to join him for lunch. If he's honest it's partly for the company, and partly to wash the lingering taste of the Hulk from his mind. He craves the reminder that she's more than a tiny flash of red in the glass heart of a flying machine as they both rain down hell.

Natasha stands surrounded by comm logs and financial records, decryption failure messages and personnel files, analyzing the haul of intel Stark had pulled out. Her clothes are the soft workout wear she changes into after missions, even though she doesn't have injuries to coddle this time, having seen no ground action. She shuffles files across seven different holographic screens, chewing gum like she’s exacting retribution.

She knows he’s there, so he stands aside while she completes her thought and comes to a stop.

He wants to yank the strings of her hoodie, dangling uneven. Instead he leans a hand on the desk, cracking his knuckles against the warm wood.

Natasha turns in an arc to survey her work space. He notices one end of the string is frayed, slightly stiff. From being chewed. She catches his gaze and blows out a slow bubble.

Bruce reaches out just as slowly and catches the knotted end between his fingers. “Harm reduction strategy?"

Now that so many of them live in the Tower at least part-time, they've all been exposed to Tony and Pepper's singular views on how a household should be set up along those principles, shaped by their years of overlapping experiences as alcoholic and workaholic.

Harm reduction is why there are caches of condoms and snacks and first aid supplies hither and yon, why an executive chef stocks pre-made meals in their personal kitchens, and why many of the rooms are soundproofed. Harm reduction has become a catchphrase for all of the strange amenities that Stark has no idea are not the way real people live, but also for those self-soothing quirks that they've each picked up that take the others aback.

Thor's casual nudity, and his habit of hauling home feast provisions like half-barrel kegs and whole cones of gyro meat. Steve's whistling, which is never a tune, but mood music like he scores his own incidental soundtrack. Clint's tendency toward blank murder face and sarcasm like he’s trying to pick a fight, which can be hard not to take personally even though it's clearly reflexive.

Natasha inhales the bubble and cracks her gum.

"I like this hoodie," she says, mouth twitching. "But I wore it when I was...being someone else, and the habit stuck around. Or maybe I cultivated it."

"That's kind of disgusting," he smirks, finding it more endearing than not.

She takes her gum out fastidiously, and deposits it in the metal trashcan.

"Tony'll have a fit if that ends up in someone's gears." 

She grins, "Everyone needs a hobby."

They do this now, banter like a casual game of ping pong, a counterpoint to the solemn calm of the grounding technique she's developing to pull him back from a Code Green. A release valve for the tension of that.

Bruce still hasn't let go of the string, running a thumb along the braided tie.

She watches his hand and says, "Got any other bad habits you want to examine?"

"Mine or yours?" Bruce could blame the post-Hulk recovery period, which always leaves him vulnerable to stimulation. He could, but he shouldn't. Because it's only exposing his usual reaction to her, the yearning fascination he tries to smother with detachment and self denial. The banked strength of her body, her fierce intelligence and wry smile. It's just that it's harder right now to hide what it does for him.

"Either," she leans forward and fiddles with the zipper, casually sliding the pull along three inches of track: zip zip zip. Then finally down. "Both?"

He steps into her space and takes the other drawstring, wrapping it around his finger, biting his lip. "That's terrible flirting." Her breath is sweet, cinnamon bright from the gum. A shiver runs up his wrists and down his spine, and he flexes his hand against the _want_ flushing hot in his chest, pounding down through him.

"You feel okay?" Natasha sounds concerned, and he's so focused on her mouth shaping the words that he flinches when her fingers brush against his temple.

"Feel fine," he says.

"Yeah," she takes a step closer and takes a breath like someone about to dive, "you do."

She's so close that he could brush his mouth against the velvet of her cheek, taste the sweep of her neck. In fact, he can't think of a reason not to--none as compelling as the warmth of her breath.

The thrilling thought that she might let him. Might want him to.

Because however she teases some of the others, she doesn't give _him_ mixed signals, and if she's this close, licking her lip…

He snakes an arm around her waist, and she takes a graceful step, and then her breasts are pressed against his chest and they can feel each other's respiration kick up.

See each other's smile curl.

"I've never slept with a coworker," he finds himself confessing.

"This coworker has already seen your dick, so where does that leave us?"

"Advantage you?"

"Pretty much always," she says, and the truth makes him laugh even as he's meeting her mouth, arching into the drag of nails against his scalp.

Kissing her leaves him deliriously breathless. The bite of cinnamon is as good as he'd imagined, the sweep of her tongue and the pliancy of her waist and back under his palms is even better.

The dizziness, however, is due to her pulling him into a spin that ends with his hamstrings jammed against the edge of the desk.

"Hop up," she coaxes, nibbling at his lower lip and planting a knee next to his hip.

Bruce briefly considers trying to redirect to a bedroom, a couch even.

Her fingers slipping under his waistband temper his reluctance, and he grabs her knee and lets her steer him back onto the desk until she's planted firmly on his lap, grinding against his dick as he suckles the skin at the side of her throat.

Natasha rolls her hips and he slips a hand down the back of her pants, cupping her ass. Her pleased noise has him shuddering between her thighs.

He should be questioning this, maybe fighting it. Slowing things down at least, but he can't remember the last time anything felt so effortless, so joyful, and he simply doesn't want anything but more of this. That alone should set off warning bells, but instead it makes him harder, shifting against her center and seeking her mouth again.

She spreads her knees and the pads of her fingers graze the head of his dick, minute adjustments, but now he can just barely feel the hard nub of her clit rolling between them, through the layers of clothing and skin, and the set of concentration on her face is its own encouragement.

When he pulls his head back to check in, her cheeks are bright and her eyes glassy.

"I can't for the life of me figure out how to get your pants off with any kind of finesse," he confesses, and gets a choking laugh in return as she rucks up his shirt, hands hot on his sides.

"I think..." She hitches and he wriggles his fingers further under the cheeks of her ass, "finesse may be overrated."

He tugs the side of the pants, the stretchy material peeling down to expose her hip.

The curve fits his hand and he rubs a circle in the hollow at the join of her thigh.

Natasha grabs his hand with damp fingers and slides it where she wants him.

First heat, then he strokes into wetness and groans. She takes a moment to yank his waistband down and hook it under his balls, giving his dick a long look in her open hand.

He's about to make a quip, but when he opens his mouth she swoops in to capture it with her kiss, wraps her fingers with a delightful amount of pressure, and grinds her clit with decided purpose against his hand.

Yeah, this is a great place to start. Who needs a bed when she licks her palm wet and gives him a steady luxurious twist of her wrist at the top? Why bother getting naked when she's already got her hands in his pants and his earlobe between her teeth?

Her hips slow to a stop, but he keeps that same pace with her clit and she whimpers encouragement, "Yeah, yeah," as if the expression on her face wasn't spur enough, reaching and open.

He's close already, but just shy of what he needs to get there, and that's fine, this woman in his lap lazily jacking him while her breath hitches and her brow knits. He can, and has, lived on the edge of gratification.

"And to no one's surprise," she huffs, reaching into her own pants, "you're a tease." She bends and shifts his hand and sinks down on a couple fingers with a deep sigh, taking over her clit with quick precision.

It's a good thing her technique on his dick becomes distracted, because the feel of her twitching closer to orgasm is amazing and he doesn't want to miss a second. She's grazing him with her fingernails as he fucks her with his hand, and then she curls forward and groans and he feels her come.

To be inside her for that hot pulsing squeeze, that extra rush of wet...to see it...

She pulls her wet hand free and fits it around the head of his dick, her undivided attention back on him. The scent of her rises up and he's a lost cause, gripping the full cheek of her ass with one hand, the other still getting the occasional squeeze from that glorious cunt and she's murmuring in his ear, "You should be aware...sometimes fucking makes me laugh...I hope that's not a dealbreaker..."

It is, in fact, the weirdest thing anyone's ever said to Bruce in flagrante delicto, and he was engaged to a biologist. It's also incredibly hot, and that tips him over the edge.

She works him through the orgasm, verging on overstimulation with her low pleased chuckle in his ear, encouraging. He fits his head in her neck as he shakes, murmuring wordlessly against her damp skin and breathing her in.

Natasha's fingers stroke the back of his neck as they pant together and then she's untangling and unknotting, stripping off the hoodie to use for clean up. She tosses it aside as he puts himself back together and he tugs her to stand between his knees, pleased and surprised that she allows it.

Her face is flushed, eyes bright. He wants more, but schools himself to contentment. He wants every inch of flushed ruddy skin on display, but he can't even wrap his brain around this giddy, easy fooling around. To want more is so terribly greedy.

She brushes a thumb over his mouth like it's something she's done in her head and is testing in practice. "Maybe we do that again sometime.”

His chest tightens, as does his grip. Then she yawns so hard her whole body clenches and shakes. "So you haven't slept."

"I can now," she gestures, and all the screens power off but one, a confirmation message from JARVIS that the files are re-encrypted. "Your plans?"

"I was going to make a pot of chili.” He shrugs, admitting, “And then I was going to eat that pot of chili."

She grins and saunters off, and he doesn’t see her for two weeks.

He launders the hoodie because he's a gentleman. He keeps it because...well, he keeps it for a lot of reasons.

~*~

_Pussy’s big and I'm proud of it_

_You can dig dig dig in and out of it_

_Make a crowd of it, bow down to it_

_Won't be long till you drown in it_

\-- **Peaches**

~*~

The intel from the compound takes Natasha to Liberia, to patiently surveil the port for days on end. The boredom is capped by a frantic and exhausting trip to Belo Horizonte, Brazil, to locate and work an old asset. It’s a piece, but not yet clear it's even to the sceptre puzzle. She's weary and wired as she strips off an identity that’s no longer needed, washing away what she doesn't want to keep with hot water and black tea laced with sugar.

Clean and fortified, she settles back into herself.

These two weeks she's been holding onto that spontaneous sex on her desk, not replaying it, but keeping the feeling close. In a life not much given to physical intimacy, it was a delightful shock, especially since Banner is just as controlled, just as careful to keep impulses in check--but the moment had been too good to deny, a jolt of connection that had become a candid parlay outside of their usual reserve.

The sex itself--no seduction, just a quick and hot getting off--had been so easy. She wants another taste.

Wants to knock on his door and see how he feels about taking her pants off this time.

Even if it's for nothing more than some lazy fondling, she's surprised by how appealing that would be, too. A gentle tease, his hands cupping her thigh and belly, letting her touch him, stroking to get a feel for response.

Natasha keeps hold of that idea, lets it ride in the back of her mind while she pulls on soft clothes, forgoes the underwear, and lets herself take the elevator to his floor.

She brings a box of cocadas she picked up from a bakery that morning, admittedly an odd souvenir, but the flavors and colors of the little toasted macaroons had cheered her. Maybe it's a kind of trade: here, have a cookie…and may I also interest you in some cunnilingus?

Natasha’s seen what he does to an ice cream cone. She doesn't think her faith is misplaced.

When Bruce opens the door she briefly reconsiders.

He's disheveled and unshaven, wearing an ancient cable knit sweater with leather buttons on the shawl collar. He looks like he's hungover from a rowdy clambake in 1952.

He blinks and palms his neck, and when he mumbles, "I didn't know you were back," his voice is gravelly. She wonders if he's spoken more than rote pleasantries to anyone since she left. He can get this way post-Hulk, withdrawn and working himself into exhaustion, like he's grinding himself into his own _Bruceness_ the way a person trying to quit stubs out a cigarette. Viciously. Resignedly.

She thinks about handing over the cookies and leaving, but then he cocks his head, knuckling one of his eyes under his glasses and asks, "Trouble sleeping?" like he sees right through the ruse but finds it charming. She flushes, thighs tightening, and pushes inside, handing off the bakery box.

"Wide awake," she hears herself matching his throaty tone without meaning to.

"I've got wine, maybe some bourbon. Or water."

"Not thirsty," she leans against the counter while he closes the door.

"You were gone awhile.”

"Yeah." She can hear the inquiry isn't about her location, but her state of being. He's asking if she's ok. It warms her, unnerves her. “Espionage is a lot of waiting around. It takes time."

He settles for that, the tacit _I'm fine_ in her answer, and follows her into his kitchen to put the box on the counter. Then he really looks at her. "And If I asked you to sit down, relax, stay a while?"

She smiles as she steps out of her shoes, then undoes the drawstring on her pants, letting them slip to the floor. He sucks in a breath, like a victory, and she feels his eyes on her as she saunters to the chair, the hem of the t-shirt just tickling the under curve of her ass.

The wood is cool and smooth. She holds his gaze as she slowly spreads open her thighs. His eyes are very dark, the bleariness receding. "You read my mind.”

Bruce slowly pushes away from the counter, approaching like she's something feral. He bends down and delicately tilts her chin up with one finger to kiss her. He tastes of late nights and coffee and exhaustion and she wants more of the sweep of his tongue, but she lets him pull back, watching intently. He reaches behind his head to ruche the sweater up and off. He drops it to the floor and sinks his knees down on it. He puts his hands on her thighs. “Maybe you read mine.”

His thumbs circle delicate inner skin, and she threads her fingers through his disheveled curls. Anticipation licks at her. Pleasure at his willingness to follow her lead, to play with her. He could so easily have refused. Instead he bends his head.

He doesn't have a technique. He has an approach. The effect at the beginning is awkward, and it takes several minutes to find and settle into something she can work with, but after that it doesn't take long to shift to the sublime.

He goes down like a scientist.

Which isn't to say clinical, but certain and methodical, running assays of types of stimulus, gauging her responses, mapping, exploring synergistic combinations… she finds herself thinking that this is really indicative of Banner's approach in general: inquisitive, observant, held in check. Shockingly brilliant.

Then he rakes blunt fingernails down her belly and catches her bush in a loose fist that presses firm knuckles, while his other fingers slide inside and up, and his mouth circles back to that thing he tried earlier that got a noise out of her, and all rational thought blinks blissfully out into insistent satiny pleasure.

She comes around an undetermined time later, spent and dazed as he soothingly pets her still, as he sinks back on his heels and wipes his face on his bare arm.

"That never happens," Natasha says, curling after him, taking his jaw in both her hands and kissing him. She wants to lay him out right here on the carpet and make him feel like this too.

"What doesn't happen?" Bruce's soft curiosity only intensifies her impulse to handle him, rough him up, roll around in his compelling thrumming calm. Get her scent all over him.

"You got me to stop thinking."

He smirks, more satisfied than smug, and of course he's going to understand the import of that, the difficulty of taking all of the analysis and vigilance offline, that it's a testament not only to pleasure but to trust.

She runs a finger along the collar of his threadbare undershirt. It’s patchy and thin, the back coming away from the neck.

He's usually in Stark’s offerings. Natasha understands the tolerance that wearing the clothes indicates, that allowing himself to be cared for even by the fringes of Tony's enthusiastic largesse is a real concession. The ragged shirt and ancient sweater are reminders of impermanence, or reassurance that he hasn't been changed, or perhaps habitual small comforts when he feels unsafe.

Could also be laundry day, but that doesn't negate why they're lurking in the back of his drawers in the first place.

“Going somewhere?” She asks, knowing he’ll follow her thoughts. She gestures him up on his knees and leans down to slide a hand under the shirt, pushing it up his chest.

“Keeping myself honest,” he says. “Safety is...an illusion. Security. Too many things here trying to persuade me differently.”

She likes the span of his ribs, the nap of his chest hair, the curve of clavicle. “Am I on that list?” She bunches the shirt up and rubs her cheek against his sternum, licks a hard nipple and then rolls it between her fingers.

He hitches a breath and says, “I'm still running those numbers.”

Fair enough. For now. While she decides which side she hopes to fall on.

He holds up his arms and she strips him of the ragged cotton, tossing it gently on the chair back. She uses her momentum to band his waist with her knees and leverage herself into his lap. His skin is hot silk against her thighs, the hair ticklish against her cunt and he holds her ankle and supports her back while she curls around him.

She asks, “Can I see your bed?”

“Reconnaissance?” he teases. “Or do you need to crash?”

“Neither.” Also both. She doesn't explain that she wants to lay him out and take her time, roll around in this lingering sensual lassitude, get him off in the place he sleeps. She can't explain why that idea compels her suddenly. She coaxes him up and blinks at him as he works through reluctance before leading her down the hallway.

“I sleep a lot, after,” Bruce is trying to manage expectations, only turning on an accent lamp with a translucent golden shade, “it's a mess still.”

There are books and clothes strewn around the bed, which is a morass of swirled layers of bedding in shades of russet and dutched cocoa. It looks like a smushed paper wasp nest.

He bends to start corralling clothes but Natasha lays her hand on the back of his neck, squeezing enough to get his attention, stepping around so he's between her and the bed. She smooths her hand down his chest and belly, the shot waistband of his corduroy pants which are cut two sizes too big and two decades out of date.

She sinks to her knees, audibly dragging her fingernails across the mangy grooves of the fabric, drawing lines toward his cock, bringing her palm up under his balls and rubbing her cheek along his hardness.

They work together to open his fly, skim his pants off, and add her t-shirt to the floor. He settles back on his elbows, and it's not that he's passive, but that he's listening to her with his whole body, focused and open. Like he can hear things about her in the way she touches him.

She finds herself being gentler and harder than she usually allows herself to be, pinning him and giving tender swirls of tongue until he squirms, nipping his thigh to hear him hiss, jacking him in a firm wet grip as his hands fist in the rumpled sheets.

He treats his ejaculate like a moderate biohazard, but he lets himself come in her hands if not her mouth, watching her watch him shake apart. After they've cleaned up he ranges languorous kisses everywhere he can reach while bringing her off again with a slow methodical hand.

Natasha takes her leave before dawn, and he sends her off to her floor with a lingering kiss in the doorway and a few cookies wrapped in a dish towel.

~*~

_Grey temples and a little paunch_

_Looks like he jumped out of the pages of_ Honcho

_I knew he had his eyes on me_

\-- **Pansy Division**

~*~

The question comes out of the blue as Bruce brings in tea for them both, setting the mug next to her keyboard. It’s a standard QWERTY layout, but she’s touch typing Russian, but before he can comment she asks, "What are your thoughts on slapping?"

Her fingers rattle onward until the end of the paragraph, then hover, expectant. Bruce is getting better at recognizing when her calm is not organic, but instead a stylistic choice.

“Slapping,” he repeats.

He has seen video of her taking a beating with more convincing aplomb than she's showing now, but he never thought she'd ask it from a lover...And yet, what better way to wrap your head around violence than in a controlled environment with a professed pacifist?

If he were anyone else--or maybe just himself and no one else--it would almost be sweet.

He sets his scalding mug down next to hers and tries to picture it, flexing his hand. "Honestly, I...don't know if I could."

She finally does give him her full studying gaze, "I meant _taking_ it, Banner."

“You want to hit me?”

“I…” she swallows, squares her chin, and lays it out, “I want to know how careful I need to be. I can check my impulses, I can be gentle. But sometimes I...don’t want to.”

Bruce gets that, he gets it right in his gut, the constant effort to be careful, be gentle, be safe. “Sometimes you want to scratch the itch.”

“I wouldn’t injure you, it’s not like that,” Natasha looks down at her hands, still splayed ready to type, “It’s about intensity.”

He blows out a slow exhale to get on top of the surge, only to notice heat pooling in his groin. “I’ll admit, intensity...is an interesting challenge. Pain without threat.”

She turns back to her screen, typing determinedly. Bruce watches her around the edge of his lenses as color floods her cheeks. She drinks the tea he made for her, and the blush spills back onto her ears. He knows she knows he's watching, and it's bizarrely delicate for two people awkwardly deliberating rough sex.

Bruce has found that the absence of real danger to life and limb makes pain more complex than a simple aversive stimuli. The transformation itself has always been a burning ripping relief. Coming back is overwhelming, fuse-blowing, tendons snapping and acid distilling into his veins. In the absence of destruction, coming back is just as good as the letting go...and she's witnessed that endorphin rush, has in fact ridden it on her very desk.

Hours later, Bruce is scrolling through maps and reading off key geographical areas when the set of factors falls into place in his brain.

He turns to Natasha, glasses lowered on his nose. It's a cheap trick, but effective for them both if he’s correctly interpreting the way her lips press together, savoring and bemused.

"I think I could do slapping. Pinching. Some pain can be enjoyable. There's some overlap with pleasure, before it becomes a threat," He pauses and seats the frames properly on his nose. "Unless the point is to become a threat, or rather the performance of a threat, and then, really, it's for you."

There's no one around, but the touch of her fingers on his mouth is still brief, fleeting as she says with something like reverence, "I'd say it's for both of us."

Bruce can't help but agree.

~*~

Pepper sips coffee from a china cup, making notes on her tablet as Natasha helps herself from the sideboard -- fresh fruit and the good sourdough toast, eggs and hash, sausage and biscuits.

Breakfast meetings with Pepper are always held in the studio she keeps in the tower, separate from the shared penthouse. It’s a sanctum -- a dining area full of warm reclaimed wood, midcentury seating and a breakfast nook. Steps lead down into a sunny open area replete with hassocks and earth toned throws, a low slung couch and a small flatscreen television on one side, a long low bookshelf and bar on the other.

Natasha likes the delineation of meeting here, separate from SI and from Stark; Pepper tending her own investment in the people inhabiting her tower. It is a gesture of care.

“Maria and Steve were called away,” Pepper says, rising and explaining both the excess food and the quiet. “So we might as well eschew formalities.” She gestures towards the settee.

Natasha reconsiders her plate, but Pepper shakes her head. “I don’t believe it was an emergency. Maria seemed more put out than steely-eyed.”

“She does hate to miss the red-flannel hash,” Natasha smirks, folding herself down onto an overstuffed pillow. Maria and Steve would have made a good distraction this morning. 

Last night’s discussion with Bruce feels fresh like an injury, leaving her with an itch to take it back. Not because she didn’t mean it, but because showing him what she suspected he could take, and offering what she could give--no, asking him...asking him to go there with her--left her feeling exposed. The first rule of spycraft is never tip your hand, always get more than you give. It’s never an equal exchange, no matter how much you bleed--and she’d overextended with Bruce.

She’d been looking forward to shoring herself up this morning with the customary brisk discussion between Steve, who believed that politics had nothing to do with justice, and Maria, who had lived the opposite until her career imploded at Natasha’s hand, both of them tempered by Pepper’s steadying influence of practical, blunt acuity.

“You are coming, aren’t you?” Pepper asked the question with just enough concern that Natasha realized she hadn’t been tracking.

Something about Israeli dancers. The benefit concert, right, the drama therapy organization. Natasha smiles. “Of course. Have you convinced Steve yet?”

There’s a cat in the cream twist to Pepper’s answering grin. “He wants to say no, but I’ve decided not to let him. I think it will be good for him.”

“Are you going to warn him about the nudity?”

“I’m more worried about the themes. Losing your brother to war, that sort of thing.”

“Steve is charming when he’s vulnerable and in need of comfort.”

“That’s terrible.” Pepper doesn’t sound like she thinks it’s terrible, “Besides, I’m more interested in him seeing the way art can help with grief.”

Natasha sips her coffee.

“And nudity,” Pepper adds, with such solemnity that you’d think she was completely serious if you didn’t know her, “nudity can be a balm to a troubled soul, a reminder of our humanity.”

Nudity is nothing, Natasha thinks, swirling the dregs in her cup. Nakedness is when someone sees under your skin, and when they do something other than turn away from your shame. She muses, “Pain, and transformation.”

Pepper purses her lips, “Are we still talking about Steve?”

Natasha ignores her, reaching for the coffeepot. “Tony still holding out?”

“It’s not worth convincing him. I’d rather spend that capital on the...results of the evening’s entertainment.”

“He does live to make things up to you.”

“Yes,” Pepper says with deliberate primness, the kind that always disguises something wicked. “He does.”

~*~

“This one comes to us from the Land of Ten Thousand Lakes, via the CDC.” Maria drops the brief on the table as she sits, composing herself, hands interlaced over the tablet.

Clint reads her as closely as Natasha does, so his, “Oh no,” is confused wariness but not alarm.

“The Centers for Disease Control,” Natasha explains to Thor, “But I suspect that it’s not exactly in their wheelhouse if they’re tagging us in instead of the Feds.”

Thor nods curtly. He’s a guy who understands ministries and jurisdictions, even if the layout of those on Midgard look like the result of kittens in a yarn store.

“They’ve had a spate of food poisoning cases, epidemiologists pointed the finger at fish caught in a specific small wetland area. They send a couple DNR people to check out the source.” Maria’s monotone continues, “These are biology grad students, so they were already excited to go help sick people by mucking about in waders all afternoon. They were gonna test the water quality, catch some specimens; they’re thinking pollution, or invasive parasites, or maybe an exciting new fish virus--holy fuck, Jesus, _frogs_!”

“Those were the CDC’s exact words when they asked us for help?” Clint’s flatly dubious.

“Close enough.” Maria swipes the tablet across the table to Natasha. There’s a marsh dotted in iridescent spring green, which resolves into a plague of frogs the size of--compared to the shellshocked young man dangling one in a net bag from a handheld scale--the size of house cats.

“So, catch them, keep them alive, don’t lick them.”

Clint makes a noise like a vibrating moose.

Natasha kicks his ankle. “What the hell?” 

“Never heard of Hypnotoad? Futurama?” He looks between her and Maria, rolls his eyes. “Whatever. I bet Stark would get the reference.”

“Clint, my friend,” Thor is more excited by this than the mission, “you know of Thrall Toad?”

“Please tell me Thrall Toad is not actually a real thing,” Clint says, brow tight, “and that this is just an Allspeak glitch we’ll all laugh about later.”

“Yes, Thrall Toad!” Thor makes the moose noise, this time with extravagant hand gestures. Maria remains deadpan, and he points a finger at her with a cocked eyebrow, “Indeed, the jest turns on the fact that you’re enraptured, and do not realize you are simply in thrall to the Toad!”

Clint’s gripping the table now, white knuckled. “We _are_ talking about the _Midgardian cartoon show_ , right?”

Thor turns back with a polite, “Hmm?”

“With the drawings?” A light sweat has broken out on Clint’s temples. “Don’t leave me hanging, buddy--are there spaceships and a cigar-smoking robot and a one-eyed badass in boots?”

Thor booms, “Good news, everyone!”

Clint deflates with relief.

Natasha comments, “Not selling me.”

~*~

“Seriously, raining frogs is just some kind of fucked up biblical shit. This is disgusting.”

It’s not so much raining frogs as dodging frogs; abnormally large, sticky and glistening, hopping up from the middle of the marsh, back legs propelling them up and out.

They are iridescent in the daylight. Clearly unnatural. They’ve grown from the size of house cats to the size of Maine coons. The few they've secured ribbit with a slow, menacing rhythm in the plexiglass bins.

He’s not wrong, but Natasha can’t let it stand. “This is about that frog in your shoe, isn’t it?”

“I still don’t know why Lila thought it was a good idea.”

“She thought it’d be cozy in there. She meant well.” That hadn’t helped the frog.

Natasha grabs for an extended leg, getting enough purchase to tug it towards her. But momentum is on the frog’s side. It punches her in the chest with both back legs, using her as a launch pad. Her hand slips and the frog flies towards the bank as she topples back into the filthy water. Clint laughs so hard he falls over as it hops away from her. 

He’s no better, covered in duckweed and algae as he splashes through reeds.

“This is maybe the dumbest thing we’ve ever done,” Natasha grumbles.

“That one is looking at me funny,” Clint stops. He shrieks as it leaps straight at his face.

“Oh for fuck’s sake.” 

~*~

Bruce has his head thrown back on the couch in his lab, hands loose and open beside him, eyes closed. Pieces of equipment are spread out all over his worktable.

Dark circles under his eyes suggest that while she was busy bagging frogs and casting tire tracks, he was dissecting some of his worst memories.

It's coming on dawn. The meeting with the CDC to hand off the live specimens had taken longer than it should have. The whole thing had, in fact.

Bruce opens his eyes when she sets her prize on his table, a styrofoam cooler encased in strapping tape and warning stickers.

“Can I interest you in a flash frozen frog with a pituitary issue?”

His mouth curls up and he gestures. “Gimmee.”

She smirks at him, and then heads to the lab freezer. “Consider it dessert.”

Bruce pulls a face. 

She gestures at the parts. “Aside from the obvious, should we be worried?”

He shakes his head. “It was a gamma spectrometer. Definitely above those kids’ pay grade, but not a bomb. Another victim of an over-enthusiastic and under-informed advisor.”

“Huh, they usually blame the internet.” She returns and climbs onto the couch next to him, tucking a foot underneath her and resting her cheek in her hand to look at him. “Heard they shut the whole high school down.”

He bends his elbow, reaches up to trace a curl between his fingers. “Whole neighborhood evacuated.”

“Did you wear the sexy bomb suit?”

He shakes his head, still fiddling with her hair. “What would have been the point?”

She doesn’t like that answer, but he’s watching her mouth, eyes so intent that she can feel a flush stealing over her chest, her cheeks.

“I smell like pond scum,” she isn’t trying to discourage, just offer fair warning.

“Flop sweat,” Bruce grimaces and holds out the collar of his shirt. “The idea that a couple kids were creating something so destructive; that we'd missed anyone in the evac; and then that the adults in their life were so wrong about them.”

Wave after wave of worst case scenarios and Murphy's Law sequelae. She shifts a little. “‘The world is full of paranoid assholes,’” she intones and Bruce’s mouth tilts up. 

“Hill has the pithiest sayings.”

“She did an admirable job of not even cracking a grin through this whole amphibian adventure.”

He traces her cheekbone absently with his thumb, and she cups his hand, moves it to her mouth and takes his thumb between her teeth, biting down sharply on the soft flesh.

His eyes flash hot. She sucks the pad of his thumb, licking the wounded skin, pressing up with her tongue. He makes a hard, wanting noise in his throat. She pulls off with a pop, kisses his palm, letting his fingers stroke her cheek, then bites down hard on the fleshy curve above the wrist.

The noise he makes shoots straight to her cunt, heat lightning in her belly. Pain, but need too. It's the keening need that wins.

Oh, she thinks as his hips come off the couch. He’s gripping the couch cushion, panting a little. Eyes dilated.

The temptation to bite harder, to claw into him, to push so hard that she forces back the recriminations, his worst case scenarios and her own constant subtle analyses, is so strong she vibrates with it.

“Sweat doesn’t bother me,” she says, like they’re still having a conversation. Like the negotiation hasn't shifted with the press of her teeth.

He murmurs, “Nat--” 

“We’ll shower. Get us both clean, then.”

~*~

Bruce is peckish and antsy, on a mission for snacks and fresh air while a computer model calculates, and he has a moment of confusion when he boards the elevator and sees Natasha...but not Natasha.

She’s doing a mild persona inhabit, light espionage. Her own jeans are usually skin tight, while these are dark and loose, rolled cuffs over her boots. Falsely casual like the wine colored puffy jacket, the zip low enough to frame the open throat of her white shirt. Big sunglasses catch her hair back from her face and she gives him a once over as the doors close. 

“Cold out today, I hear,” she says, Midwestern small talk like another facet of her costume, a out-of-towner chatting away the awkward silence of sharing an elevator with a stranger. “You heading out without a jacket?”

“I, uh,” He clears his throat, and recalls her chiding Steve’s inability to commit to a character as a far bigger disguise problem than his penchant for baseball hats and sunglasses. He shrugs and shakes his head, and uses his _reassuring people on the bus_ voice, “I tend to run hot.”

He expects a quip, but she just smiles pleasantly and her eyes drift to the floor number display counting down. He gestures for her to exit first, thinking of water pouring down his back that morning, the beautifully vicious tug of her fingers in his hair as he knelt in front of her and made her come.

He glances at the curve of her neck as she passes, spots the label, and sees that it’s his shirt.

Bruce walks her out of the lobby, sliding a finger delicately along the back of her hand like casual acquaintances. He leans in to analyze the scent of a perfume that is lovely, but not hers, and tugs the cuff of the shirt just poking out of her sleeve.

"This," he says, not really expecting a response, just wanting to show her that he sees before they hit the street in different directions.

Her mouth shifts and she says, "soft ownership,” in her own voice, and the shiver belongs to this thing they've created, and Bruce revels in it all day.


	2. 7" Singles

### 7” Singles

_I'm a belly dancer_

_I'll shake forever and I'll never care_

_I'm a building jumper_

_Roof to roof you'll see me flying in the air_

_\-- **Pixies**_

A week later the anonymous intel drop that pulled Maria and Steve out of the breakfast meeting resolves into a second mission in Minnesota.

The abandoned mall dates from the mid-seventies and is made of twisty concourses with glass panel railings, and half-levels connected by curving ramps. The sightlines are a nightmare. Only winter sun filters down through grimy skylights, reflecting off of corroded chrome and abstract metal sculpture.

Natasha is pinned down behind a low wall sprouting dusty plastic ferns. From the angle of gunfire it’s where their opponents are trying to drive her away from. The storefronts are locked and gated, and she can’t see any access doors or reason why she’s drawing this much fire.

“Found ‘em,” Tony flies low over the dry central fountain in the empty heart of the mall, “Sniper in the jewelry store, third level--”

“That’s fourth level on the west concourse side,” Steve corrects, but Clint’s already fired a volley from the blind he’s set up in the Radio Shack.

“Every killshot begins with K,” he intones, “and if you two can stop bickering about the architecture, I’d be much obliged.”

“MC Escher wasn't an architect--” Steve begins.

Tony ends, “This is retail Habitrail.”

Natasha zeroes in on the Pottery Barn they were looking to drive her away from, which has soaped windows and a new magnetic strip lock on the door. She shoots it off, and levers up the metal plated roller door.

Humidity and pond smell washes over her, green and musky. “Found what they were protecting, guys.”

It’s warm, and the working store lights illuminate a collection of cheap above ground pools. None of the filters are running, and some don’t even have water, just damp pine mulch bottoms and improvised covers made of lengths of window screen wired together.

“This isn’t the pet store.”

She turns at the whine of repulsors. “Looks like exotic animal trade. Anything on scan?”

“Small fry toward the back, caged rodents; I totally called it with the Habitrail comment.”

“Just don't touch anything,” Bruce says over comms, “I'll get proper samples once I'm clear to go in.”

“Fellows?” Thor’s voice is both sharp and uncertain, and it cuts through the comms chatter, “I have found a large mechanism that is flashing numbers--like a microwave counting backward--”

“Mobilize,” Steve rattles off directions to the team to evacuate, and even Tony doesn’t seem to mind the show of superior visualization and logistics, just takes off to fly past the mechanism to get a look-see and report back.

“Yeah, I’m calling a Code,” Bruce responds to Tony's assessment, “I need transport to the device.”

Thor drops Natasha at the jet out in the icy parking lot. She gives herself points for sticking the landing--hammer flight is not her favorite.

Bruce hands her a pile of sweater and shoes, still body warm, and tells her, “Be careful.”

“You're the one heading toward a ticking bomb, doc.”

“Ditto.” He scowls and shoves a large toolkit into the stretchy waistband of his uniform pants, and hops piggyback onto Thor. With a sweep of hammer they fly back into the labyrinthine mall. He'd have argued if he had the time to waste, but she's glad to cut past that; she's far more confident in her own defusing skills.

She's been studying his mechanisms. She's been racking up successes.

Thor stays with Bruce, holding a phone up to light the mechanism and for Tony to consult over video. The clock keeps counting down and Bruce grows more frustrated, throwing tools that prove useless, his rate of speech accelerating to rattle out complexities of thought cycling ever faster to no avail.

Tony chews his lip as he watches the feed. “Don’t hit anything!”

“He’s not going to hit anything,” Natasha is not worried. Not exactly. Sentence structure is breaking down and his mouth is decoupling from the higher levels of his brain.

Steve raises an eyebrow at the stream of imprecation peppered with Brazilian Portuguese profanity. Natasha simply notes that he doesn’t use any forms of _whore_ , which is definitely a stylistic choice given his options. She explains, “He’s prepping Plan B.”

Bruce sends Thor away at fifty-eight seconds left, and descends into good old-fashioned Anglo Saxon cursing nine seconds after that. Twelve seconds later, the pitch shifts down sharply into a roar that crashes over comms like blessed relief.

Natasha clenches her fists against the goose pimples, ruthlessly ignoring the shiver building in her with the echoes of his transformation.

The explosion is muffled. Anticlimactic. The subsequent grumbling of a prickly Hulk is louder.

Steve turns to Natasha, “You’re up.”

She piggybacks a ride on Tony's armor, using the hand holds Clint had not only insisted on but designed himself, negotiated as his price for participating in Avengers Equipment Days. Tony descends down through a blown out skylight, into a ruined seating area.

Hulk paces an erratic path. Wired, peevish, ready for come down though he'd be the last to admit it.

His chest hair is singed, and on closer inspection, so is his arm hair. Conclusion: he hugged the bomb like a teddy bear to absorb the bulk of explosive energy, directing the concussive force straight up and down to blow out the roof and crater the floor, but leaving the support columns all around the space intact.

“Impressive,” she says.

“Strongest there is,” he sneers dismissively, “cherry bomb can’t hurt.”

She lets him pace away and then come back before she adds, “I meant that you were thinking about innocent bystanders--what if the mall wasn't really empty--so you shaped the charge to limit the destruction.”

Hulk is more easily read than Bruce, and it’s not just the fact his expressions are writ large. Pleased surprise lights him up untempered by cynicism or self-reproach. He rests his hands on his knees to lean his face down into hers. “Smart cookie.”

“I know my business.”

Hulk humphs.

“Seems you do too,” she’s pitching her voice low and soothing, but not so much that it sparks distrust. “I like when we work together and help people.”

He straightens and looks down his tiny cat nose at her, chest like a climbing wall. She smirks, and sees him processing that she’s wary, but not intimidated. “Hulk is dangerous.”

“So am I.” She opens her palms at her sides. “I try to use it for good.”

Hulk mirrors her stance, and when she raises one hand, he does the same. She takes a step, and touches her palm to the center of his. She should have taken off her gloves. Next time.

“Team,” he says, his voice rumbling in her chest.

“Good job, us,” she taps her fingertips on his skin. Big knuckles twitch, his forearm rotates, and he offers her the underside of his wrist. “Yeah?”

He grunts affirmative.

She scratches her blunt nails along an acid green tributary of vein, and he shudders.

~*~

Her touch on his palm and forearm sinks into his mind like a hot knife through butter. Bruce is thrown back into himself violently, coming to rest with his fingers hooked into a chain link store gate Hulk had torn like lace.

He's suspects the words stuttering out of his mouth aren’t his, that they’re something stuck in the buffer from before the transformation, just waiting for the Bruce parts of his brain to come back online to more easily craft concepts into speech. "C-c-can take a lot, I think, pain and frustration, but the good kind, th-the--"

She throws the shock blanket across his shoulders. He shivers it half off.

His hands are caught in the metal links but that's keeping him from falling to the blasted pitted concrete that used to be a seating area. "Just don't be cruel," he ignores the random association of Elvis flashing through his brain. "No mocking, no tricks..."

Natasha worms her way between him and the gate, bearing his weight up like he's a backpack, and uncurling his fingers from the holes. "This is something we do together, find out what you can take."

His breath comes out like a building collapsing, and he's nodding less at the words than the steadiness, the tenderness in her voice.

"I don't control you; I control the situation for you." She turns neatly, bracing around his waist, his arm across her shoulders in a way that pins the blanket in place. It's more awkward than the fireman carry she's used when he's really out of it, but speed isn't necessary, so they limp together instead.

_~*~_

_Gentlemen do not prefer blondes_

_They prefer an amazing_

_Eclectic record collection_

_Any day of the week_

_\-- **Mindless Self Indulgence**_

Bruce hasn’t been waiting long, just enough for his body to settle into the position on his knees, his hands resting on his thighs. Her rooms run on the chilly side, but she's kicked up the heat so it's comfortable to sit still and hang out naked in the open air. He’s putting himself literally in her hands tonight.

It’s not lost on him that Natasha is versed in techniques of torture. That really should concern him much more than it does.

She closes the bedroom door behind her with a click and leans back against it.

“Nice outfit,” he says. 

“Mmm,” she nods approval, “and wearing just a wicked grin suits you.”

She’s got thigh high stockings and flowy knickers like a flounce around her hips, and is barefoot. Atop this study of muscle and black silk, she’s put on his favorite cream-colored sweater. Her hair is loose, one side tucked behind an ear. “I hear it gets chilly in here.”

“You could do something about that.”

“Yes.” She saunters toward him. “I could.”

The slap across his face is more sound than impact, but it leaves a sting.

She studies him, as he runs his tongue along the inside of that cheek. His heart rate has kicked up, but the excitement feels bright and sweet, nothing like the metallic sour lurching in his chest that signals trouble. He nods.

The tip of her tongue just touches the middle of her upper lip. She traces a delicate X on his cheek with the rounded corner of her thumbnail and then gives him a more solid crack that shifts his head. Gentle fingertips on his chin bring his gaze back to hers and she looks...proud of him.

Bruce hadn’t expected that, isn’t prepared for how that look sings inside him. The sound he makes is halfway between a groan and a soft _huh_.

Yeah, this was for both of them.

Natasha’s hand traces down his neck, across his chest, and just grazes over a nipple.

He nods. He thinks she’s calling her shots like a kind of safety line, giving him time to prepare, but the anticipation is something he’s dealing with as well as the spike of overstimulation. She eases down on her own knees, whisper of silk against carpet. She delicately traces through the hair, over the nub, bending her head to touch her hot tongue to it like testing a battery. He can smell her hair, and he blows out his breath to get another good whiff when she closes a pinch on his other nipple.

“Motherf--” he cuts himself off with a hiss.

Natasha doesn’t just pinch, she rolls, working the nipple like a pro even as she hums and nuzzles the other one hot and wet.

Bruce is a goddamned battery, positive and negative poles on either side of his heart, writhing between pleasure and pain, gripping his thighs as he releases a groan.

In a heartbeat she’s on her feet between his knees, tipping his head back by a handful of hair to look up at her.

“Brilliant,” her cheeks are flushed, mouth parted as she breathes, “you’re just…”

He swallows awkwardly, thinking that even with a good portion of his blood supply trapped in his aching dick, he’s still way ahead of the average person on the street, but it’s like she reads it off his face.

“No, Bruce,” her hand combs through his hair hard enough to sway him, but it’s a soothing counterpoint to the heat and sting, “I don’t mean that--you’re brilliant because even with all that, you’re so _honest_ about what this does to you.”

Her kiss is slow and sweet after that, his body shaking as he tries to hold still and not give in to the desire to whimper, or to rut against her silky leg, to simply exist in her competent hands. Her skin is beautifully rosy, tiny flash of pink nipple between the knit of the sweater.

She kneels again, and draws her nails through the hair down his sternum, over his belly, his muscles jumping with anticipation.

“Talk to me,” she says, and bites her bottom lip.

“It’s...better, maybe,” he gasps, “than I thought.”

“What is?”

“The waiting,” He nods as her fingernails scrape down through his pubic hair, across his cock. His hips roll. She’s teasing now, delicate. He can sense the pain just around the corner and he’s aching for it, but she's holding back, listening very closely. It occurs to him it’s because he's hesitating. She's wondering if maybe it's just the anticipation he wants.

He hasn't told her his biggest fear; that all the pain and self loathing and fear in the world will never be enough to stop him from _wanting_ to let go to the other guy, that all his control only serves to put it off until the last minute and make it even better when the tension finally breaks. He's only now admitting to himself that he’d like to let go to her.

“I’m curious,” he licks his lips, “to see what you’re gonna do to me. What it’s gonna do to you.”

She hums and nuzzles his neck, reaching into the pocket of his sweater for a bottle of lube and flipping the cap. It’s warm from her body, drizzling on his cock as Natasha bites down hard on his trapezius, suckling and gnawing until the skin turns hot. She pets him leisurely and punctuates marks down his chest and he moans and relaxes into her embrace. He savors the anticipation and the sensations, like scratching an itch hard and wallowing in the raw sting that follows.

He hasn't told her about pain or fear, but he discovers that she hasn't told him about pleasure, either. Bruce can hear sensuality and affection couched in her touch, that she's taking delight in his body and his responses, giving him pleasure along with pain not as a sweetener, but because she's giving him _herself_ unfiltered. She wants to taste his blood heat, kiss the imprints of her teeth on his skin.

Natasha comes at him with conflicting impulses. He receives her synergistically.

He offers her his suffering and his ecstasy, shaken by her hand working his cock inexorably, her fingernails sinking into the soft skin behind his ear as she pins his head against her breast and murmurs encouragements. His fingers slip up her thighs to the hot silk between and she nips the skin of his temple and slows her hand.

“I'm close,” she whispers, an admission of shame. Bruce letting her do this to him has nearly undone her.

“I know,” he groans and burrows his fingers past the silk, “I can hear your heart pounding.”

She rakes a handful of hair and pulls his head back, eyes searching his face for any tell, any bluff. He rocks his palm against her cunt, solid and steady as her hand on his cock falters, squeezes down hard. She gulps a breath and he sees her pupils twitch as everything fires. They topple sideways onto the carpet, and she clasps his thigh between her own to ride aftershocks while she brutally pushes him over the edge.

He's gasping and kissing her, scraping her lips with his teeth, covered in sweat and her skin wrapped around him.

They slow, finally, and she rises up straddling him, sweater falling down her shoulders. She touches his bruised shoulder, and hisses like the pain is hers.

He means to sigh, but hums contentedly instead.

She smooths her fingers over it, and when she pulls him into the shower she cleans all her marks gently. He lets her handle him, and washes her down in turn. 

Toweled dry, she rubs arnica gel liberally over her chew toy. He bites his lip and doesn't mention that arnica isn't clinically effective. He's simply amused at himself for feeling it work anyway.

The pre-made meals in her kitchen are more pretentious and less spicy than those that show up in his, and they shovel them in, ravenous. Bruce buzzes pleasantly all over, watching her eat like contemplating a sunset. He can feel his pulse at the points where her fingers and mouth sunk into him with exquisite pain and yet a stunning absence of violence. She pours him a large glass of water from a pitcher chilling in her fridge and watches him drink it, and he knows it’s companionship, but it swells in him like affection.

Natasha tosses the forks in the sink, and stands there, at a loss. Her mouth works, chewing at words she doesn’t let out.

He lets himself reach out and reel her in, massaging her scalp until she melts boneless against him, arms locked behind his back.

~*~

“I’ve been reading,” Natasha says, once the avionics tech heads back down the ramp and they have the quinjet to themselves, “apparently safewords are a thing.”

Bruce feels a bit of relief that the handful of books that showed up on his tablet were not, after all, from Tony. He’s not a guy who misses details, and while Bruce’s purple nurple is well-hidden, some of the other marks Natasha’s given him skate the line of public, and Bruce has...liked them, not felt the need to hide them from himself or anyone else. He takes the co-pilot seat. “So I hear.”

“Thoughts?”

“Well, _no_ is a classic for a reason,” he begins, calibrating the new sensor array, “but I suspect _no_ and _stop_ could be problematic for you?”

“Problematic,” It’s not so much a blush as two hot circles on the apples of her cheeks, “that’s one word for it.”

“What’s another?”

Natasha turns in the pilot seat to meet his eyes. “In my mouth? Meaningless theatre. In my ears? A spur.”

“Counterintuitive, then.” Bruce files this away for later, “less red flag and more red cape.” He expects the error message, so he adjusts and re-runs the calibration sequence without fuss. “I’ll be honest, saying _safeword_ sounds dumb. I’d almost rather say _cut_ like a director.”

“My concern is that one word is not enough information,” she says, “but I’m not confident in your verbal skills when pressed too far…”

“Bruce also smash?” He shakes his head. The results are nearly there, so he tweaks the sensitivity a little, and re-runs the calibration. “No, you have a point, I’ve never been wired for dirty talk once things get really interesting.”

“I’m rejecting the stoplight scale out of hand: green is not go.”

“Red is not stop...well, not that kind of stop.” Bruce locks in the adjustments and powers down the sensor array. “Something scalar though, with room for nuance.”

“More. Steady on. Less,” she agrees, running through a post flight checklist. “Something deep knowledge, that's intuitive for you. I can learn it, but it needs to be on the tip of your tongue.”

He scrapes the tip of his tongue against his teeth, mulling over the feeling of when intensity spills over, becomes destructive. “Electromagnetic spectrum.”

Natasha closes the ramp. The jet is now in deep standby, the only illumination the cockpit's yellow emergency LEDs, and the safety lights in the empty hangar, filtering through the windscreen. She rises to her feet and steps between his knees, her face shadowed when she looks down at him. “How would this work, then?”

“Frequency,” Bruce licks his lips, “wavelength. The longer the wavelength and lower the frequency, the better.”

She sets her hands on his armrests, leaning down to give him a languorous kiss. She meets his eyes from mere inches away, “Run through the scale for me, Banner.”

“Radio, microwave, infrared, those are low and slow waves, things are good. Then visible spectrum. Then ultraviolet, x-ray, gamma, those are high and fast and too much.”

“Seven point scale, and gamma is bad?”

“Gamma is very bad. Radio, slow waves that go the distance, that's very good. The fulcrum is visible light, that's zero.”

She sinks down, her hands resting on his thighs, and looks up with an expression that's strangely tender for how sharp it is. “What does zero feel like?”

Bruce says simply, “Where I live.”

Natasha tilts her head and considers this. “You see pleasure as its own kind of challenge.”

“And you don’t?”

“Fair enough,” she concedes with a raised eyebrow. She may be brilliant and skilled at analyzing people, but he pays attention. When he cares to. He’s figuring things out about her as well, touchy enough for her to change the subject back to him. “Anything you’d like to bring to the table?”

While she’s been reading, Bruce has been researching, trying not to be intimidated by the array of possibilities that have exploded while he was off being dangerous and ascetical, delineating the boundaries between arousal and loss of control in depopulated areas. First making peace with frustration, and then with solitude even in crowds. Once he knew he could be safe, orgasm had become just another tool in the harm reduction kit; for the endorphins, the stress relief, to get to sleep when he was wired. 

He'd been so grateful to get that part of his humanity back, frankly.

Adding in a partner with her own deep quirks, rediscovering play--he’s feeling out such tricky territory that the kink feels like a freebie. What’s talking about bondage when you’ve already discussed alternate personalities? “I think...I’d like to hear your views on restraint.”

“Only weaponizes me further, I’m afraid.” Natasha looks bummed, which he finds charming in way that makes him shift in his seat. “And if I’m immobilized completely, I’m not certain I could keep other reflexes from kicking in. Especially since I'm trying to teach those reflexes to Clint right now.”

“I’m not tied to it,” Bruce shrugs, gratified when she smirks at his pun. He's willing to let it drop without getting to the real question. “I’d rather see you work to keep yourself under wraps anyway.”

She draws a deep breath, licks her lips, “There’s merit in that.” 

He hums agreement.

“And you?” She circles her fingers in a tight cuff around his wrist.

That's the thing he's always admired and feared about her, that she pushes and pokes and sees into him, pulls things out of him. She's never let him disappear into himself without following.

He spreads that hand flat against the console, tension and anticipation. “I’m...not sure.”

_~*~_

_I suck your mind_

_You blow my head_

_\-- **Queen**_

"I have to let him make contact before I can fight back. It's knowing the lay of the land,” Natasha warns Bruce. Clint gives him a wary look, but she presses thick cotton wads to her eyes and assures, “Dr. Banner will restrain himself.”

Clint shrugs and ties the length of fabric around her head to keep the pads in place, stepping off the mat. Bruce notes the tension in one of her cheeks that belies a withheld smirk.

Clint circles, pauses, reverses. He’s barefoot like she is, and unnervingly silent. She’d promised to improve his reaction to threats around corners, and this was how she'd been taught.

Natasha’s head moves minutely, her mouth open to conduct even more sound to her ears, but Bruce can’t tell if she’s tracking or searching. With a creak of skin against mat, Clint darts in to brush her elbow and then spins to come at her from the other side--but she’s anticipated the feint and it’s like he trips over her, is yanked around her, and she propels him onto the mats.

Natasha and Clint don’t speak in full sentences when they workshop techniques, and right now they don’t even spar in full matches. They trade off the blindfold, working out the finer points of feeling around corners and engaging with an opponent you can’t see coming. Bruce suspects earlier sessions were how Clint became so stealthy in the first place.

He takes a shoulder to the stomach and rolls gracelessly across her back, landing hard on his side with a huff. She bounces up from the crouch, ready and listening, but Clint is lying very still just as he’d fallen, catching his breath with a guarded hiss.

It's been several weeks since a mutated frog cracked the man's rib, long enough for the jokes to have died down, but Bruce feels compelled to intervene, “You okay there?”

Clint raises one index finger.

Natasha undoes the blindfold with a whisper of cloth, keen eyes assessing the damage to Clint.

There are fist sized bruises on her own arms, and Bruce can imagine matching ones on the thigh she’s rubbing, the red welt on her back, the transient swelling of a strained ankle. He’s stashed a collection of therapeutic grade lineaments in her apartment for when she comes back wrecked after missions, but he should have realized she'd train just as hard.

Unsettling, but not as painful to watch as Bruce had anticipated. Seeing her searching and anticipatory had been jarring, had stoked him, and that was desperately uncomfortable. Leaving him tingly, and wary, and wanting.

He doesn't want her vulnerable; never that. But he might want her...reaching for something. Waiting for the next moment. Anticipating his actions before striking out with her own.

Clint comes to a decision about his ribs and rolls flat onto his back, breathing more freely.

Natasha comes over to Bruce and dangles the length of fabric before dropping it into his lap. Bruce lets himself stand, and touches the bruise on her shoulder, taking in her tiny shiver when he presses it. “We should get some ice. For you both.”

~*~

Bruce understands this: Natasha learns very well from text and from real interactions with people, while he’s always been either hyper-cerebral or hands-on. So he takes advantage of the huge weird metropolis he lives in to find and peruse some specialized boutiques. He has money, for the first time in a long time, so he goes shopping.

Frankly, he’d come looking for a simple dildo. A gesture, a way of letting her know that he was copacetic with penetration being off the table, at least as far as his generally unpresuming but occasionally huge green raging dick was concerned. He could understand reticence, in fact encouraged it in someone currently becoming too used to his volatile alter in other ways.

They hadn’t talked about it per se, but it was obvious pretty early on that they were working off-script. But he'd wondered if she missed that piece, as it were, or if maybe she wanted to do him.

It's cold out on the street, but he's sweaty just thinking about her hips driving into him.

He’s got a blossom of color on his forearm from two days ago, when he slid his dick between the oiled cheeks of her ass, slow and steady as she squirmed underneath him and kissed and suckled a nearly painless but surprisingly bright bruise. It’s just above the muscle that aches when he types too much, and he knows that’s not an accident, but a commentary.

She’s giving him good reasons to find a better work life balance. He wants to give her every reason to keep letting him bury his face between her thighs.

Bruce pauses on the street. The store looks like an 80’s Prince video.

When he was coming up, sex shops were the very definition of seedy. They charged a cover, and had booths at the back, and were staffed by the kind of guy who worked the desk at a residential motel. This place is clean and well-lit, and employs fresh-faced enthusiastic clerks who coax him to touch the devices and then turn them on, debate the merits of remote controls, speeds and modes, cheerfully describe incomprehensible jewelry, and squirt dollops of lube on the back of his hand to demonstrate the slip. They offer a working knowledge of materials science and an assumption of joy that both leave him befuddled and incredulous.

The sex geeks let him browse finally, checking in deftly without any judgement.

He feels simultaneously old and excited. Not in the sense of aroused--though, yeah, that too--but buoyed by possibility and play. It’s sad, and novel, and delightful all at once. He buys a token bottle of lube, not what he’d come for, but that’s fine. He has a project. He's putting together a list. He’ll be back.

~*~

The text says, _Play hooky and come to the movies_.

The rain outside has darkened the early winter afternoon so that it feels later than it is, and Bruce can already imagine the cool humid petrichor and car exhaust down on the street.

He puts his phone back, and knows he's smiling.

"I'm on to you," Tony pings a bolt at him, expertly aimed to just lightly bounce off Bruce’s arm. "So before you tell me you're practicing the Hulk hypnosis, keep in mind that from this point on, I'll assume you're lying."

Bruce deflects, "I'm working on a technique.” 

"With your dick?"

He shoots Tony a sour glare.

"Hey, _your_ big green dick,” he holds up his hands in defeat, “do with it what you will."

"It's just a movie," Bruce sighs, the furious doubt he keeps tamped down suddenly welling up. He pulls his phone back out, "But maybe you're right."

"I'm not. Ignore me.” Something haunted crosses Tony's face. He grabs Bruce’s workspace off his screen and throws it onto his own. “I’ll babysit. You should go."

When Bruce gets there it’s a Hitchcock screening and Natasha is ensconced in the back, wearing a fedora and sunglasses and a trench coat, and he chuckles as he hands over the popcorn. It's terrible popcorn and the seats are rickety, but her showy costume and her arm pressed against his makes the whole scene feel right.

When both Ingrid Bergman's roast chicken and her stab at domesticity go down in flames, and she playfully admits she's in love with Cary Grant, Bruce rests the back of his hand on Natasha's thigh. The anticipation grows as the movie spies rise and fall, and she squirms in her seat as Claude Raines is left behind to the circling wolves.

At intermission she tosses off her hat, and flat out holds his hand.

They stay through _Spellbound_ , fingers tangling and knees brushing, as Gregory Peck sweats out his pain. The warm scent of her skin is making him perspire in the heated theater, steam coming off the wool of his jacket from the rain.

After, on the walk to Veselka for dinner, he tells her, "Ropes, maybe. No cuffs.”

And she takes his arm and murmurs, "Of course."

Bruce feels tied already, bound up with want and the desire to put himself in her hands, to let her stir him, hold him.

They eat blueberry pierogies and borscht so purple it draws a wry grimace from her, and they talk about Alicia and Devlin and whether they have a future, if spies can ever rise above their secrets. Natasha strokes the tendon in his neck as the cab weaves through traffic in the village, heading back to the upper West Side, and tells him that any spy who can see a future probably doesn't have one.

Natasha kisses him before he can turn on the lights and they move slowly through the rooms to her bed, casually shedding clothing as he palms her breast, as she fondles his ass.

It's so damned easy, for all the heated, contained heat between them.

She's still wearing her jeans but they're peeled open and loose over her hips, her shirt and bra lost in the living room. He twists a pink nipple as she works herself, riding his thigh as he holds her lower back, feeling all the power coiled there.

She shudders and he rolls his hips up against her, trying to draw more out of her and she falls forward, grabbing his hands with a quick twist, holding them above his head.

"Do it," Bruce says, dazed with her blown out pupils and heavy breasts, the gorgeous flush from her chest up to her cheeks.

She ditches her pants and loots in a gear bag tucked under her nightstand. He half rolls, and watches her pull out a short length of climbing rope. From where she crouches she ties his one wrist to her headboard, then crawls over him to secure the other with solid knots. The stretch in his shoulders feels good, spread wide as she kneels over him with damp panties and lips bitten rosy.

There’s something to this, being attached to her bed. The claim of it, maybe. He can get out whenever he wants, he trusts that he’s not really backed in a corner, and that helps, knowing she’d bust him out if he only asked.

“Give me a wavelength.”

Bruce licks his lips as he looks into her eyes, and he thinks _green,_ and he says, “Visible.”

It doesn't feel like a strain until she pulls the waistband of his pants over his hips and even then, he works his breathing through her efficient tugs and finds a sigh when she drapes herself over his bared skin. Her hands on his ankle are unhurried but sure, her breathing a commentary both greedy and reverent. He wants to give this to her. He focuses on being this for her.

The desire he's losing himself in is the desire to see this through.

Bruce doesn't realize he's closed his eyes, that he's cycling meditation techniques until she lays a hand on his belly like a question.

"More," he says, and he sounds shaky but thinks he's just being too sensitive, he’s also aching hard and wants her to shift her hand lower, shove himself into her grip. He opens his fists and nods, because he wants this.

She hitches his other ankle down, and strokes up his inner thigh and he can hear the cantos in his head, chants and cycles and numbers, and he can't feel her fingers any more, just the rising goosebumps and the steady pressure of his erection. He doesn't realize that his eyes are screwed tightly shut, that his tension is of the livid variety until the strain on his shoulders eases abruptly, his feet come free, and warmth covers his lower limbs.

Bruce opens his eyes, feeling hazy and nauseous, as close to a post-incident hangover as he's had in awhile, and sees Natasha's face is pale and very serious. She's still in just her panties, sheathing a tiny oddly shaped blade.

The rain has stopped and night has fallen hard. He’s lost time, and that's never a good sign.

Sliced fetters of climbing rope slither from his wrists as he catches the edge of the blanket, pulls it and himself up into a hunch against her headboard. Shame washes through him.

"Bad idea," is all she says, tossing aside the knife.

 _Fuck_ , he thinks, brain already winding up the refrain that he destroys everything--but she catches his chin, intent.

"I called it, not you. Not him.” Natasha’s surety falters, though her grip on his jaw doesn't, “I didn't...not tied down."

She gets up and paces, like she's not sure what to do. He fights off the rolling in his stomach and goes to find his pants. He shoves the self-reproach into a corner of his mind and an insistent semi back behind his zipper, and scratches the back of his neck. He doesn't want to leave her, leave this situation so unsettled.

"There's a whole mess of bad 80’s sci fi that Jarvis just acquired in the common room. Wanna go watch _Flash Gordon_ and eat junk food?"

She pauses in pulling on a loose t-shirt, thoughtful like she doesn’t have a ready response to this. "Who's Flash Gordon?"

~*~

Natasha puts on her second most innocuous pair of sleep pants, worn fleece printed with toasters flying through space. Not as twee as the cartoon sharks, which may strike the wrong tone with someone actively dissociating not ten minutes ago--to the point of deafness--who now just calmly suggested Netflix and chill as aftercare.

Bruce detours to his own apartment, but out of all the possible reasons he might want to duck out, it turns out it was only for a quick change into sleepwear, as if he's just as reluctant to leave her unattended. He darts back out, a fluffy blanket folded under one arm.

She eyes it along with his clambake fisherman sweater, “Cold?”

“Thought you might be.”

She can tell by the lay of the drawstring and drape of the soft blue cotton that he's tucked his lingering erection up under his waistband, lest he poke outward horizontally. There was a point when he was stretched out tight beneath her that she'd realized it was just her and a cock running on autopilot, that Bruce himself had checked out even before she'd gotten to anything challenging, or more precisely, just tying him down had blown past his tolerance.

Natasha had asked for a wavelength. More than once. Then like any professional when the shit hits the fan, she'd stepped neatly around the emotional reaction and took the L.

They have the common room to themselves, and as Bruce brings up the movie he asks, looking at the big screen and not her, “Bad idea, how?”

Natasha is emulating an emotionally healthy adult, and so she doesn't say _excuse me?_ or _were not you there for the fugue state bullshit you just pulled?_ Because at this point she's not sure how present he really is yet and how much autopilot she's still working with. So instead she says, “It got lonely without you.”

He seems to take that as answer enough, but she presses into it, needing to put it into words for herself as well. “I could have broken past it. Probably without even breaking skin. Taking...is not being given.”

His eyes drop down from the screen but don't meet hers. “I wanted to.”

“So this wasn't some sense of obligation.”

“The spirit is willing...” he trails off with a self deprecating huff. They both know the flesh is far from weak, when truly pressed.

Natasha pries one of his hands from the other and laces her fingers with it. “To be frank, just doing this, _as myself_ , is arguably kinky for me.”

“Boundaries hopelessly gerrymandered,” he draws her hand up and kisses the back of it, and when he catches her eyes to share the jest he pauses and murmurs, lips still brushing her skin, “...really?”

“Maybe,” she hedges, shivering, “yes.”

He grazes her with his teeth, idly, watching her reaction. She lets him see, but she also prods. “Why didn't you say anything?”

He licks a circle around the knuckle of her thumb. “I knew you'd stop. It was...easier to let it ride than figure out if I wanted you to.”

“Do this for me instead,” she swallows, because now he's chewing on her wrist like a teething puppy and it shouldn't be this distracting but he's _right here_ with her again and she's certain of it. “When you do figure it out, let me know. In the meantime, make me some _good_ popcorn.”

“Deal,” he says, and sucks a small mark on her inner forearm before letting her hand go and heading into the kitchen. Broken capillaries, that's all. She's done it to him plenty the past couple months, but it's the first time he's bruised her back.

Bruce returns with a large mixing bowl, setting it in her lap. “I would have been fine, you know,”

“I wasn’t fine with that.” Natasha knows they’ve both endured so much worse, that this shouldn’t even be on the radar as disturbing, and yet it had been. It is.

She doesn’t want to be endured. She wants to be seen, the mess of impulses and intensity and discipline that spin and seethe inside her, she wants to affect him with all of it, and see him flinch and shudder, and then look at her like it’s all seduction, all human.

The smell of popcorn lures out company. Steve and Tony walk in while having an impassioned discussion about air support until they come to a stop in the circle of couches. Steve is caught by the action on the screen, while Tony twigs on the weird vibe in the room.

Tony whistles a falling note, spins on the ball of his foot and heads right back out again. Steve sputters, “Is this...did they remake Flash Gordon?!” and vaults the back of the couch to land on the other side of Natasha.

_~*~_

_Sleeping on your bed_

_You break my arms_

_You spoon my eyes_

_Been rubbing a bad charm with holy fingers_

_\-- **Pixies**_

Steve boards the elevator wearing a dark blue suit, a burgundy tie, and a frown.

Bruce blinks.

“The SHIELD memorial for the fallen, they're dedicating the wall.” He explains, "I didn't think wearing the uniform would be appropriate.”

“So,” Bruce has to ask, “you thought you’d hum the tune instead?"

Steve grimaces. "Romanoff suggested the tie."

Bruce turns to hide the look on his face, digging for his chapstick with the hand not holding the plastic bag, "Did she."

"Said it made a statement.”

"She's not wrong."

Steve looks down and sighs. Bruce notices the faint star pattern in the silk. Even better. "I'm just wearing the suit in a different way, aren't I?"

Even bearing his own dual identity, Bruce feels weary on Steve's behalf. Feels the little sting of manipulation for a guy who wanted to show up and do his duty, but not necessarily be the public face for the rest of his life. At the same time, he thinks Natasha was probably right. The survivors would want to see who lead the charge, the embodiment of doing the right thing, a reminder of the ideals they all fought for when dealing with the fallout, the loss of loved ones, of purpose and identity.

"If it makes you feel any better," Bruce plucks at his own sweater, "I'm pretending to be warm and fuzzy."

Steve's smile is wry. "Don't you always?" He fiddles with his tie bar, which is worn gold and has the stylized wing of the 107th, then pockets it and decisively strips the knot out of the tie.

The elevator door opens to the common area, revealing feet in dress socks propped on the arm of the couch, a pink toe peeking out of the left sock. Clint. Behind him, Maria Hill is sprawled in an armchair. Her severe navy dress looks as much like a uniform as Steve's suit does.

Hill always looks at Bruce like she thinks he should be locked up, or locked down. Assessing and not exactly lacking trust, but wary. Most days, he appreciates that.

Today she looks worn, thin skinned.

Clint's hand appears like a shark fin over the edge of the couch, one of the heavy glass tumblers waggling around. "More," he shouts, and Bruce can tell from the cadence that he's a little drunk.

Natasha pops up from behind the bar in an arc of fluid motion, hopping up to sit, swinging her legs around, and vaulting off. She's in a somber charcoal suit, a fresh bottle in her hand, and she’s barefoot.

Her jacket is still buttoned, everything in place on the surface, but Bruce can feel the underneath is frayed like worn electrical cords. She pours another double shot for Maria, who offers a muted thanks and just enough eye contact to be polite until she turns to pour for Clint. Maria gives Steve a telling look, and when he nods and takes a weary seat she shifts that look to Bruce.

He tamps down the annoyance. He’s not a highly trained agent of espionage but he can read a room, thanks, and come to his own conclusions.

Maria asks Steve, “How did the condolences go?” as Natasha pours vodka into Clint’s glass with a deft pleasantness that belies the crackling energy everyone else in the room is actively ignoring. Even Clint gives her just a brief tight smile before raising his glass and adding, “We have a bet going that you’ve already started the Widows and Orphans Fund.”

“I’d suggest scholarships, and a more tasteful name,” Natasha takes a swig from the bottle, “but it would be beneficial PR. It makes good tactical sense in the long run.”

Steve blushes angrily, but all that comes out is a sigh, and when he speaks it’s about those left grieving, still reeling over a year later. The casualties from the fall of SHIELD were shockingly light, but the fallout was terrifying, ripping families and a tight community apart, exposing whole lives as lies. There was a lot of blame to throw around, especially from innocent support staff caught in the middle. If even Captain America was getting blowback, Bruce can imagine the fire Natasha’s been walking through as an ex-merc whose background is now splattered across the internet. Yet she went to the dedication of the memorial wall, out of duty and stoicism, but he thinks also to deal with her own pain.

Bruce sidles toward her along the edge of the room.

She offers him a smile as warm and bland as an airport bagel. The conversation continues, but he can feel eyes on his back like he’s fiddling with an unstable explosive. A part of him is amused not to be the most volatile thing in the room for once. He takes a breath and thinks about bomb defusing. He asks her, “Have you eaten?”

The spot between her cheek and eye twitches. “Not as such, no.”

“Might as well grab a sandwich,” Bruce steps closer to her, angled toward the elevator, “if all you’ve had today is vodka and vitriol.”

Natasha surveys the room, which despite the hush is still trying to gamely pretend they’re talking to each other by avoiding all eye contact with the two of them. She trades the vodka for her discarded heels and gestures for Bruce to lead the way.

Once the elevator’s at speed, he says to Natasha, “You can tell they’re professionals by how they waited until the doors closed to let out a sigh of relief.”

“SHIELD was a very professional agency,” Natasha's stoicism cracks to let out a hitch in her voice. “I was only spat on twice today, and that was before the service started, so I still had my overcoat on.”

“I’m sorry for your loss.”

Her mouth opens part way through his sentence, then closes for a moment. Her laugh is short and self-derogatory. “My loss.”

Bruce understands how complicated it is, but he says simply, “Yes.”

She breathes carefully through her nose. “Thank you.”

It’s midday but overcast, and her floor is gloomy. Her lighting must be set to manual, since it stays that way as they enter the suite proper. “I’m not hungry,” she confesses, shaking her head a little at the bag still dangling from Bruce’s fingers.

“Ah, no,” he follows her into dining area and sets it on the table, “I’m running automated analyses and had time to kill, so I walked to the bakery and got an assortment. Baklava, mammoul, a few pieces like macarons. There’s something with cherries.”

She unbuttons her jacket and slides it off, laying it across the back of a chair. She leans her hip on the table, arms crossed. “Are you here to practice your compassion then, while you have time to kill?”

He tilts his head, “Is that what you think?”

“I think tea and sympathy makes me deeply suspicious, in general.”

“I’m getting that.” Bruce considers the delicate obfuscation Maria and Clint had offered, different than the kindness which is making her prickly, which probably feels like pandering now that he thinks about it, or maybe like he’s trying to take advantage of her vulnerability. Her friends had pretended along with her that she was cool and unaffected instead of a wall with an electrical fire inside. Bruce would rather break open that wall, even if it burns him. “We could try coffee and cruelty instead.”

Natasha stalks him slowly and it feels like a warning, like she’s expecting him to bolt. He keeps his stance open, his eyes on hers.

She wraps her hand in his belt and uses it to steer him into the living room and against the back of her couch. He leans awkwardly, hands braced. Her blouse has a texture and sheen, raw silk, and a stain on the collar that might be tears, might be spittle. He thinks whatever she needs right now, he’d be happy to give her.

“I’m out of coffee,” she says, “should I take that out on you, too?”

“Have at it, I can take it.” Bruce looks down at her fingers jammed into the waist of his corduroys, “I can’t promise I won’t enjoy it, though.”

A real smile stirs one side of her mouth. “I don’t have condoms, either.”

“We’ve been creative so far.” So far she’s had as many fingers in him as he’s had in her, and considering his metamorphic tendencies and the darker parts of her curriculum vitae, he’s not been one to push whether she was drawing a hard line due to distrust or disinterest.

Natasha hums agreement, then her eyes flick up to pin his. “Or you could go get some.”

“Coffee or condoms?”

“Coffee won’t get you inside me. But it’s your choice.” She lets go of his belt with a little shove, and starts unbuttoning her blouse.

Bruce cups her face and kisses her with deep deliberation.

Her breathing goes harsh and uneven and she bites his lip to break the kiss, her voice ragged when she says, “Closest supply cache is next floor up, in the training suite.”

The first aid station in the training suite has enough medical supplies to make Bruce cringe with the extravagance, a box each of 9mm and 45mm ammunition in a biometrically locked drawer, protein bars, an AED, a cheap burner cell phone on an inductive charging pad, heavy duty zip ties, and one single solitary condom.

The next one in the strip was ripped open, half the foil left hanging off. He pockets it, nearly running into Tony in the hallway ten steps later.

“Hey, I thought you were going out for sweets,” Tony lays an arm across Bruce’s shoulders and slows them both down to discussion stroll pace.

“No, I’m ah, on my way out,” Bruce digs out his wallet, “I left this in my other pants, in the locker…” he waves it toward the training room.

“I thought meditation was supposed to help mindfulness.”

“Practice makes perfect.”

“Your first set of simulations has completed, by the way, if you want to take a look.” Tony punches the up button for an elevator to take them to the labs.

“No, um,” Bruce presses the down button for a different car, “I was going to get some extra baklava--Clint and a couple others had that SHIELD memorial today. They might appreciate the gesture.”

“I saw them leave for it earlier,” Tony shudders. “I can’t imagine what they look like now.”

“I heard Steve spent a lot of time talking with the survivors.”

“I’ll have JARVIS order comfort food.” Tony steps into his elevator. “When he gets like that, Steve’s a real bonerkiller. Best thing for it is to stuff him and put him to bed early.”

“Noted,” is all Bruce can think to say.

When he gets to Natasha’s floor she’s naked, and within seconds so is he. She strips him and manhandles him as if she’s leading him in a vicious tango, speed and dizzying momentum in a show of finesse. He’s still extricating his other foot from his shoe, his wadded pants caught around it, when she lays him out on the thick pile of her carpet and plants her knees against his shoulders.

She’s hot along his chest and belly, her hair brushing his thighs as her greedy mouth takes him in. He groans at the view and then buries his face in her.

He focuses on eating her out while she multitasks, sucking him to full staff and rooting in his pants and fucking herself on his nose. It’s when she swivels off his face that he recognizes the condom rolling on, and then she’s pinning him to the floor with a hand on his belly, lining him up and sinking down on him.

For a moment everything is still, soft tight heat and those eyes looking at him with a strange incredulity. She rakes her nails down his belly and he bucks upward, slides his thumb between her lips to press her clit. She braces her hands beside his head and proceeds to ride him into the carpet, a snapping circular grind that shakes her breasts on impact and hits something in her that makes her squeeze.

It’s like being fucked by a force of nature.

Natasha’s skin lights up pink and red, a flush across her chest and she’s humid with sweat, clenching down tight as she stops at the bottom of a stroke and adds her fingers to his, bringing herself off with a shout.

He strokes her back, rides out her aftershocks, and kisses her so long she digs her fingers into his shoulders and rolls herself beneath him, ordering, “Fuck me already.”

Bruce figured they were already doing this, but he’s not going to quibble semantics once he checks the condom is still in place. He gives as good as he’s gotten, reveling in the glorious mess they’re making of her, of him, sweat and sound and wet, and when he gets the proper leverage and rhythm, her heels driving into the cheeks of his ass and her teeth gnawing on his shoulder, she does start to laugh in waves.

~*~

Bruce comes back from the bathroom on unsteady legs, bearing a warm washcloth. He snags the bag from the table and pulls out the bakery box.

She cleans up and leans back against the couch to assess the damages. There are purple red fingerprints on his shoulders, a set of teeth marks near his neck. 

“So, got any other issues you need to work out?” He pulls the string on the box, the knot popping free with a satisfying sound. “Because if so, we’re gonna need to go to a Walgreens.”

Natasha’s apartment now smells of sex and honey. She rolls to her feet and puts the kettle on, pulling out mugs and a teapot.

“Just so you know, I wasn’t going for the theme of pastries.” Bruce studies a dark orange macaron. “So when you first brought me cookies, that was what, a bribe?”

“You’ve got a sweet tooth,” she explains, letting her smile into her voice. “But it doesn’t count as manipulation if you see it coming. Or if you come too.”

“Now you’re using double entendre to distract me from the ethical qualms.” He comes into the kitchen with his pants draped over his arm. “Also, you broke my zipper.”

“Now you don’t have any excuse not to throw them in the trash where they belong.”

He hums like he disagrees, but not enough to try to pry the slider back onto the teeth to prove a point. He’s wearing only his glasses, and she’s taken aback by the fact that she’d lost track of where they’d gone or come back from. She’s usually so much better at tracking details like that. Tactical analysis is slipping to the periphery where he’s concerned. She considers this development while nibbling the edge of a bird’s nest of delicate honeyed wheat holding three perfect pistachios like tiny green eggs.

“You know...” Bruce leans across her kitchen counter and studies his pastry options.

Natasha braces to deflect any number of conversational gambits, tamping down a vicious annoyance that he would break the hard-won calm so soon after the storm.

"We've been talking a lot about pain,” he selects a chocolate macaron and looks at it like it owes him something, “but just now we really got you going..."

It’s not anywhere she expected him to go with this conversation. It’s really the thing about him she enjoys the most, his ability to surprise her, to read her accurately and counter odd for odd. Right now, his acquiescence to changing the subject away from her pain, this strange episode of caring couched in sex and snark, makes a small tight part of her unwind as if she were safe. "Multiple orgasms."

"Skipping like a stone," he pops the macaron into his mouth and turns that considering look full on her. "How long could you sustain that, do you think?"

"My preference...is to go for quality, not quantity..."

"I know." His teeth catch a little at his upper lip, thoughtful, a bit fraught. "But you worked up into a state...I'd like to see that."

"You'd like to make that happen."

“If you’d let me,” It's almost a hum, the tense exhale in his throat, "I really would."


	3. Covers and Tributes

### Covers and Tributes

~*~

_It's not really work_

_It's just the power to charm_

_I'm still standing in the wind_

_But I never wave bye-bye_

_\-- **David Bowie**_

**__** _~*~_

“It’s the frogs,” Maria says, pulling down the zip on her windbreaker. The chill lingers, but she’s always warmed up fast and their stroll through the park is brisker than the weather, to stand out less among the morning runners.

Natasha sips her coffee, and refuses to let her brain earworm her with the Hypnotoad sound.

“Helen came to me after she consulted on the set-up we found at the Pottery Barn. It wasn’t in the report she sent, but something about those damned dayglo frogs made her think they might be connected to anonymous intel she’d been getting about limb regeneration research. I’ve been keeping an eye on what she’s passed along.”

Nat’s oversized sunglasses hide her pained expression. “Stark and Potts both are still twitchy about anything with the word ‘regeneration’.”

“Exactly,” Maria says, “Between the frogs, and JARVIS flagging a high-security lab in Cleveland as a possible AIM-wannabe, I’m pretty sure that Helen’s intel is trickling out from there.”

“You want me to go in?”

Maria tosses her cup in the trash. “I want you to see if it’s necessary, if it’s an option. Is Helen’s source overly concerned, or do we have folks out there trying to brew immortality in a bucket? With frog parts.”

“That’s disgusting.”

Maria shrugs, “Whatever.”

Natasha carefully removes the lid from her coffee, finishes the dregs of milky foam and swirls the cup.

“Infiltration isn’t a quick fix. This isn’t an ideal time for me to be gone for any length,” she says, and though Maria nods, she presses further. Between the intermittent takedowns of Hydra bases, the small side missions, the work with Bruce and the Hulk, Natasha’s not exactly swimming in free time. “An extended absence will be noticed and have an impact.”

Maria looks down the path, her expression deceptively bored. “Potts still wakes up convinced she’s burning down the house. Stark might literally burn down the world to save her, if it came down to it, if he thought he had a target to focus all that anxiety on. Besides, immortality-chasers always end up being a pain in the ass. It’d be a treat to nip it in the bud this time.”

It’s been a long time since Nat’s used her premier skill set, and an even longer time since she’s stood aside when she could help. She sighs.

Maria grins at her, “Plus, if you’re undercover, you’ll miss the Steve Rogers Gala of Guilt.”

Natasha crushes the paper cup in her hand and shakes her head, “Catholics.”

~*~

The moment Bruce steps into the kitchen he feels the weird energy between Tony and Steve, but he’s committed, and more importantly he wants a cup of coffee, so he tucks his chin down and navigates around them. 

Tony leans against the long metal counter in the main kitchen, arms crossed and head tilted. It's his puzzling out a circuit stance. “They were government positions, Steve. Pensions and whatnot.”

“Half of their families won't get any death benefits, Tony.” Steve folds his hands on the table, and it's a standoff but not a stalemate. “The government declared all agents who were Hydra are traitors, but they’re lumping a lot of casualties into that category without cause.”

Filter cup filled, Bruce presses the brew button.

“Makes it look better.” Tony lays it out ruthlessly, and Bruce is reminded that this man's legacy was a sizeable chunk of the military-industrial complex, and that he's only been able to dismantle as much as he has because he knows all the wiring. “It reassures the public that evil's been defeated and the good guys didn't take too bad a hit.”

Steve shakes his head, swallowing back his disgust, “Even with cause, some were so deep they involved innocent people in their cover identities, spouses and _kids_.”

“I know you're angry,” Tony starts, and Steve rears back in his chair.

“Of course I am. But this isn't about that…”

“So what’s it about? Aside from you feeling guilty.”

Steve’s cheeks color. “I don't feel guilty. And I keep pushing for an investigation to clear the names that can be cleared, but this is...maybe we can offer some solid financial help. A lot of these agents had kids, families who didn't know what they were. Not to mention the civilians…”

Bruce fixes his cup and taps out the spent grounds, murmuring, “Widows and orphans.” Steve has been test driving pieces of this idea since the memorial, which had ripped the scab off and exposed a lingering infection in the body politic. He’d spent the first twenty years of his life in a family wounded physically, emotionally, and financially by a war everyone wanted to put behind them and only remember with glory and pride. Of course he ached for the innocent people left behind that everyone wanted to sweep under the rug.

“Ok, so say you raise some funds, then what, Steve? You write people checks? How do you determine who gets what?”

The blush deepens with Steve’s resolve. “Pepper offered to set up a meeting with some development people from the Maria Stark Foundation, to go over how the nonprofit would work, how to invest the funds and figure out a distribution system.”

“Oh she did, huh?” Tony’s mouth twitches, and he steps away from the counter and puts his cup on the table next to Steve. He jokes, “You need better pillow talk, my friend.”

“Tony…”

“Alright, so you want to do an event. Be the public face of it.”

Steve tightens his jaw, moves Stark’s cup toward himself. “It's important. To stand up. Maybe it will help those families, not just financially but…”

“Captain America vouching for them,” Bruce says softly. “It won't hurt.”

Steve nods, sips from the cup. “I'd like us to all contribute. They used to auction off dances for charity. Or experiences. Time spent.”

“Like kisses at a fair.” There's a mean edge in Tony’s voice that feels self-directed. “Party with Hawkeye, waltz with the Black Widow, dunk Thor in a booth.”

“See the monsters in their cages.” Bruce doesn't mean to sound quite that bitter, so he takes a hot slug of coffee to wash it down.

“We can vet the bidders ahead of time; it's not war bonds, we can be choosy.” Steve’s gift is strategy, tenacity even beyond the physical prowess, and it makes his optimism ruthless and inexorable. “People want access, and they’ll pay for it. We can funnel that impulse into a good cause.”

“You and Pepper have thought this through.”

“Yes.”

“I won't auction off myself or my tech,” Tony takes back his coffee cup, swirling the remainder and knocking it back. “But there's Captain America memorabilia at the mansion. Maybe something else worth contributing.”

~*~

When Natasha first proposed holding their...post-Code Green retrieval sessions...in the gym, he had resisted. The Hulk might be able to help the team, but Bruce drew the line at training. He didn’t want anyone, himself included, to start thinking of the Other Guy as a just another technique, like Steve and Thor’s ‘hammerclang’. “It’s about calming,” he’d argued, “we should practice this somewhere calm.”

Natasha had nodded sagely, then quietly countered, “In the heat of combat, he’s going to have a nose full of sweat, and blood, and smoke. Is a cup of tea going to counter that, you think?”

He’d sighed, and opened his mouth, but she’d continued.

“Our gym smells like our cleaning products, our equipment, and underneath that our sweat and our blood.” She’d raised her hand and gently tapped the end of his nose. “Olfactory nerves, Banner, lead straight into the base of the brain.”

In the intervening time, the lullaby had developed from a promising theory to a proven technique, and she’d begun leading him around by more than the nose. And the sessions have moved on from gentle stretching and key phrases, to more strenuous katas designed to key up his sympathetic nervous system, engage his fight or flight, bring the Other Guy closer to the surface before easing him back down.

They have less of an audience these days, the team now well-versed in the phrases and growing confident in his control, even as Natasha pushes him into light sparring.

She hasn’t gone any easier on him since they started fucking around, but he’s fascinated by the ways in which it overlaps--and the ways it doesn’t.

There’s nothing lush when she slams him into the mat, no ragged intake of breath, no hunger in her touch. It’s all precision and controlled burn, aggression delivered like medication, raising the Hulk from his subconscious with the same lack of violence that she raises a suckling welt on his arm, but also none of the sensuality.

Even at the end when her touch loses all aggression and turns soothing, it’s the gentleness of reaching out to a skittish animal.

Natasha sits back on her heels, still stroking along his arm and hand. Bruce knows the words, thinks he can hear the tone echo in his brain, but if pressed he couldn’t swear he actually hears her say them anymore. He pulls back, digging his own nails into his palm. It’s uncomfortable, different than the real transformation, like a parasite moving under his skin, but once she suggested that the light hypnosis left him open enough to solidify the procedures, Bruce didn’t know how to say no.

Now, he craves that reset. The moment of trusting someone else to bring him back.

Her smile of professional pleasure slides into something warmer, more mischievous. “Nice work.”

They have kept these two parts of their lives separate, but it’s hard sometimes to retain that distance. When she’s walked him through a crisis. When he’s surfaced to safety and sweat instead of terror. “How nice?”

Her eyes darken, and her breathing picks up. He leans forward, ready to bridge the distance on hands and knees.

The whistling coming up the hallway is aimless and jaunty, like seventies game show music, and Bruce snags a nearby towel and sits back. Steve leans a little too casually in the doorway, and says, “Hope I’m not interrupting.”

“No worries, Cap,” she looks up at Steve, and it amazes Bruce how she still controls the situation. How she uses her calm and poise to direct as easily as words.

Bruce rolls to his feet and retrieves his water, “We were finishing up.” 

Steve nods, “I just wanted a word with Romanoff.”

Natasha catches Bruce’s eye, and indicates that he should stay. He lingers in the background, knowing Nat’s forcing Steve to either leave it alone or explicitly ask him to leave. For his part, Steve waits for her to stand, maybe walk out with him.

She remains resting on her heels, a study in cultivated patience, giving him no choice but to loom or to sit.

Steve gives the mat a dubious look and then sinks down cross-legged, his _aw shucks_ shrug just as cultivated. “So, I’m guessing you’ve heard about the benefit.”

She nods.

“It would mean a lot to me,” he says, working the sole of his sneaker with his thumb, “if you’d participate.”

“You know you have my support,” she says carefully. 

“I know. I’d like to ask for more than that.”

“I dislike being on display,” she says, tone still neutral. “Even in costume.”

“Look at it as a chance to tell your own story,” Steve says. “All of those folks who only know you from the news and what you released on the internet. People want to see the Black Widow face to face.”

“I’m not telling anyone a story, Steve,” she says. “Not even for charity.” She doesn’t twitch, doesn’t flex her fingers, but Bruce can feel the tension rising. He rolls the towel in his hands, rueful that this is harshing the post-practice mellow for them both. They have dinner plans that night, and Bruce bides his time thinking about what they can do after, to recapture that calm buzz. Perhaps before, to work up an appetite.

“Something else?” Steve coaxes. “A fight demo with Clint? A dance? I don’t want to make you uncomfortable.” He looks up under his lashes. “Tony called it kisses at a fair, but,” he holds up his hands, “no kisses, I’m not asking that...”

Her mouth flattens, amusement and annoyance. Steve waits her out.

“Fine,” she relents. “No demo. I won’t fight for fun. But I’ll dance with those willing to pay.”

He reaches out, fingers brushing her wrist, and the part of Bruce that’s a little more bitter than he cops to wants to slap that hand away from her.

“Thank you,” he stands and holds his hand out to help her up. “For real, Nat. I know this is...difficult, but I promise it’ll be worth it.”

She purses her mouth in acknowledgement.

Bruce waits until Steve has left before handing her the bottle of water, which she drains. Then she reaches for him, fingers curling into his hair so tight his eyes sting. He holds her gaze and wraps an arm around her, taking comfort in the solidity of her back, her ribs, her taut posture.

“He doesn’t know what he’s asking,” she says.

“He wants to make the world better,” Bruce says softly as her nails rake across his scalp, as she slips her other hand down the back of his pants, gripping under the curve of his ass.

Her mouth softens as she pulls harder. “Maybe he does know, then.”

Bruce lets his head fall back, and shudders in pleasure as her teeth and tongue close over the muscle of his shoulder, and he strokes the back of her neck.

~*~

The topic bounces back at Bruce later that day when Pepper and Tony stride into the shared lab space. They’re volleying amiably, and while it doesn’t rise above the mellow sweetness of Leontyne Price resonating in the air, a part of his brain can’t help but follow any conversation he can hear.

“Mutual _machination_ is a start, I guess, stroking each other’s charities. I was just hoping you’d get enthusiastic participation and not--”

“Say the word ‘pity’ and I’ll change my mind about making you watch modern dance.”

Tony doesn’t even get through the mime of zipping his lips before he starts talking again, “Any traction on--”

“The tailor? Be patient, I’m not just laying groundwork, here, I’m repaving surfaces you’ve been off-roading all over--”

“ _Paving_ , Pep; if you’re _re_ paving--”

“Really?”

“--that means there are already roads, just crappy roads, so I can’t be off-roading, though maybe if I’m not even on the…crappy roads...” Tony clears his throat in Pepper’s pointed silence while the orchestra swells. “Sorry, honey.”

Her smirk is audible, “Trust me. I can play a long game.”

“It's scary and hot because it's true.”

Bruce slides open his desk drawer and slips on the noise cancelling headphones. Tony and Pepper have a coded interplay that veers between work and deeply personal, and Bruce is wary of cracking the code. He’s also wary of landing in Pepper’s sights; it’s bad enough Tony’s replaced most of his shirts on the sly, he certainly doesn’t need to dodge both of them.

He successfully ignores them for a full five minutes before Tony rolls toward him on a lab stool, snapping his fingers. He pulls off his headphones. 

“It’s decided,” Tony says, “you need a presentable suit.”

Shit. He shakes his head, “I don’t. Really.”

“Do you even own a tie?”

Bruce wonders if miniature dogs feel this way about being put into their little outfits. He’s saved from further protest by the ding of his phone.

Tony’s eyes widen. “Who’s looking for you, buttercup?”

Bruce flaps his hand to shoo him away, but is surprised himself. The only people who bother his phone are already on this floor. If it were an emergency, Tony would know.

It’s a text from Natasha, encrypted. Weird, but intriguing. He ascends the handful of stairs to his lab, noting that Pepper's leaving and Tony’s already occupied with his own work. The message is a short video, clearly shot by JARVIS earlier in the very space he’s in.

Her lush mouth is the focus of the shot, a bright smirk on her face.

“Got a briefing, doc, for a quick mission, so I have to cancel dinner. Sorry.”

Disappointment flickers, along with confusion. He’s not sure why she sent a delayed video instead of a quick text at the time. 

She continues, “I don’t want to compromise your sensibilities, but it’s likely I’ll be impersonating a scientist. Fortunately, I take good notes. And I have a costume change.”

The camera pans back a little, and Bruce sees she’s wearing a lab coat. The perspective shifts just a hair more, and he sees the script of his name embroidered over the pocket, the bold line of her clavicle, the sweep of her pectoral muscle softening into the swell of her breast.

Oh. He fights back a grin. He wouldn’t swear she was naked under his lab coat, but he wouldn’t bet against it either.

“Next time,” she leans in, “don’t leave your stuff lying around.”

She gives him a wicked grin and a wink, and the video crinkles up, digital celluloid and smoke over the _Mission Impossible_ theme.

He goes to sleep that night imagining the way the lab coat would fold at her wrists, where it would hit on her thighs, how fucking beautiful she’d be naked and flushed pink, succulent under the starched cotton.

~*~

_Some break the rules, and let you cut the cost_

_The insecurity is the thing that won't get lost_

_\-- **Howard Jones**_

~*~

Natasha crouches to put the trash can back by the desk, which is occupied by a woman with a short bob of iron grey hair streaked with silver. She’s fallen asleep on a desk blotter doodled with molecular graffiti, her computer screen dark. The skin under her eyes is translucent and dark, layered glazes of moss and mauve.

There’s an inhaler and a cold half cup of coffee on a printout of data, and the handwriting on it matches the troublesome notes that were part of the brief from Maria. Down the hall are the labs, and beyond that the mouse room, and a humid room packed with terraria housing amphibians; past that the lower security department that breeds feeder crickets and worms.

Natasha has spent weeks on recon, worming her way onto the crew that tended the lab animals, gathering access to ever more restricted areas of the tightly locked set of buildings that comprise the campus of Akesotech, only to find that the source of the leak and the source of the science is the same person.

She shakes a shoulder, unsurprised when the woman flinches awake. “I’m sorry,” she murmurs, “I just thought your neck would get a terrible crick.”

Dr. Bernice Kikkert’s eyes run a circuit of the office that sends a flick of adrenaline into Natasha--this is a woman with the walls closing in. The doctor’s voice is a rasp of a whisper, “I need to see your badge.”

Natasha presents the ID on the badge reel at her belt.

“Haven’t seen you before,” Dr. Kikkert says, “Did you transfer?”

“Last month,” she smiles with restrained pride and drops the agreed-on passphrases, “I’m interning at the Cleveland Clinic, I work here nights. Gotta pay for my ramen somehow, you know?”

The doctor’s eyes narrow, “What’s your internship in?”

“Pastoral Care.”

“Fuck me, they sent a baby,” Dr, Kikkert coughs into the elbow of her lab coat. It’s a long, wracking cough, and she holds her ribs with the other arm as her face turns red. She pulls in a shuddering breath and wipes the tears from her cheeks with dignity. “I regret getting you involved in this. I regret a lot of things, but I wasn’t expecting such a fresh face to turn up here.”

~*~

“Oh please,” Clint shakes the bag of microwave popcorn. “We’d make an awesome tag team. We could do a whole bit with a fake table. He could hit me with a chair.”

Thor lets Clint do the talking, following avidly, his own bag of popcorn resting on one big palm. He’s worked his way through the popped kernels and is now cracking the old maids between perfect molars.

Steve leans against the counter, dubious. “Romanoff didn’t think much of a fight demo.”

Clint flaps his hand at Steve, but gives Bruce a considering look. Bruce focuses on the chips and guac, commenting, “She doesn’t really have a sense of humor when it comes to stuff like that.”

“We have been watching WWE,” Thor interjects. “I feel strongly that Clinton and I could come up with an excellent heel turn to impress the guests. Perhaps, Banner, the Hulk could be persuaded?”

“Not a chance.”

Steve rubs his chin. “I’m pretty sure wrestling isn’t real,” he says, like he’s not sure how to break it to Thor, and is annoyed that it’s been left to him.

“I am familiar with courtly displays of strength and skill, Captain,” Thor’s tone is patiently chiding. “It would be quite fun to engage in such without concern for princely dignity.”

“In wrestling spankies. With one of those light up jackets. Maybe a ladder match.” Clint shakes his bag again with naked glee.

“I read that each of those jackets is $15,000,” Bruce muses.

“Think Stark would buy me one?”

“Let’s do a little more brainstorming,” Steve sounds desperate.

Thor sighs, bored but willing to compromise, “I’m happy to offer my services as an escort.”

“You’ll want to strictly define _escort_ , FYI,” Bruce points with a chip at Thor’s massive arms, “before the bidding starts.”

“Yes, good point,” Thor crosses his arms, “I do NOT enjoy the merengue.”

“Archery lessons and foxtrots,” Clint snickers. “Not much else I can offer.”

“I do enjoy the selfie,” Thor says, brightening.

~*~

For all of it’s private research lab sterility, Akesotech is not that dissimilar to the facilities Stark built in the tower. It’s more impersonal, certainly, designed for scientists who view their work as a job and not the thing they’re forced away from by biological imperatives. Still, there’s a hot plate and cozy beverage station tucked up near a set of lasers where Dr. Kikkert is brewing tea. Her stash isn’t as fancy as Bruce’s, mostly variations of bagged English Breakfast and some chocolate mint rooibos that was clearly a gift and remains untouched, but it will do.

Natasha takes the mugs to the little lecture area near the lab entrance, while Dr. Kikkert checks the terrariums and aquariums. She’s moving methodically and Natasha’s getting the sense that she’s biding her time.

The documents leaked to Maria’s contacts suggested that Akesotech was doing the gene therapy, mapping, and cell regeneration that it claimed to be. However, the methodology was growing ever more shady, and the use cases for Akesotech’s discoveries were even shadier--and according to the mole, for sale to the highest bidder with the least amount of conscience.

Dr. Kikkert coughs again and pain sweeps her even features. Natasha knows that her mother had suffered from a similar chronic condition, and that Bernice Kikkert had taken a year sabbatical in her late thirties when her mother was dying. Returning to academia had been trying, the department she’d built had spun off a series of patents during her leave of absence, and she was effectively sidelined from benefitting from the intellectual property she’d helped develop. Ultimately she’d bailed for the private sector, and been with Akesotech since.

“We wanted to rebuild cells,” Dr. Kikkert begins, tapping tiny crickets from a carton into a terrarium, “kick start the body’s ability to heal itself. Use it for burn victims, diabetics, cystic fibrosis patients...possibly amputees, although that’s always been a pipe dream. Humans lack the cellular structure to regrow whole limbs. But the work was supporting better forms of attachment and fresh cell growth, and a grafting process that had huge potential.”

Natasha sips her tea, patiently letting the words unwind.

“We even had a few breakthroughs collaborating with Dr. Cho out of Korea, Dr. Ross out of Virginia. We were so excited to work with her, see if she’d be willing to share some insights from when she and Dr. Banner had been working on gamma irradiated cell lines--they're such delicate beasties, you look at them the wrong way and months of work go down the drain.” She sets the screen back on the terrarium. “I took a risk going into the private sector, but it paid off. I had control over the development and use cases, resources, eager talent to mentor. It was very exciting work, for many years. I thought I’d found a home.”

The cheap ceramic cup scalds Natasha's hand, but she uses that to push away her own bitterness. Homes can be rebuilt, isn’t that what Clint is always proving to himself? Don’t be afraid to rip something out and build better. “So why drop the dime?”

Dr. Kikkert pauses, wipes her mouth with the back of her hand. “I found out they’d been selling the tech to any private buyer with a grip of cash and an axe to grind. They had sold my technology, my work, to that hack Aldritch Killian, who bastardized it. Who flung money at my old post-docs to lure them in and keep pushing dangerous tech even further.” She faces Natasha head on. “I need help, to make this right.”

“My aim,” Nat sets down the cup, “is to locate the source of this volatile technology, and to shut it down.”

“I’ve been altering the projects I sign off on, to see where the source material ends up.” Dr. Kikkert steps closer, and the reddish light of the heat lamps in the room turn her encircled eyes the purple of bruises. “I have names, and I’m going to find out what everyone on that list is doing with a gene therapy that they don’t understand and that they have no right to possess.”

“Give me access to the system.” Natasha stands, and pulls a fresh pair of nitrile gloves from a dispenser on the wall. “From now on we meet offsite only.”

~*~

Natasha spends her nights cleaning labs and caring for doomed animals, while her days feature deep dives into the Akesotech servers, curled up in a patch of wan sunlight in the two-room apartment her cover has rented in an old brick house across town from the research campus. It’s close to Bernice Kikkert’s neighborhood, but the gardens are wilder and the cars parked on the streets older.

She kicks the forensic accounting to Maria, who perversely enjoys crunching numbers for evidence. As for the science, Dr. Kikkert is remarkably clear and concise in breaking down the complexities, at one point explaining, “It’s not considered promising anymore, this particular avenue. It’s not sexy like biometalloids or printing technologies. But it’s my life’s work--I _should_ understand it thoroughly enough to explain it, don’t you think? Call me Bernice, by the way.”

“Call me Nikki.” It’s not the name on her badge, but the way Bernice smiles ruefully, it’s understood that it’s still not her real name.

They meet after Nikki’s overnight shift, in a hipster coffee shop downtown, the sky just beginning to lighten though the weather is unseasonably warm this week. Bernice has called in sick, and Nat knows she thinks it’s malingering, but that cough sounds downright tubercular. 

“It’s sweet of you to be concerned.” Bernice pockets her inhaler once more and pulls her large coffee closer. “It’s a chronic lung thing, that’s all, had it since grad school. Discovered by the guy who invented the stethoscope, by the way. My case is severe, but still manageable, just makes me prone to pneumonia, so I do this whole song and dance every winter where antibiotics become one of my food groups.”

Nat briefs Bernice on her diagnosis of Akesotech, and her prognosis for taking them down.

“I’ve been naive, in my career. I’ve been idealistic and clueless, and I’ve been the person who’s patient, who has faith in the chain of command to make things right.” Bernice tears apart a scone with fingers shaking from both her medication and her rage. “But it’s never just about the science. And I don't have time for patience.”

Nat asks the question she’s been holding back until now, “How far are you willing to go?”

Bernice dusts off her fingers and shoves the plate away. “Did you ever read Madeleine L’Engle, Nikki?”

She shakes her head but it’s a lie. She’d read _A Wrinkle in Time_ to Lila when she’d fled to the farm after the fall of SHIELD, lost and hurting. The ritual of it had been more soothing for Natasha than the child sleepily listening.

“I became a scientist because of a book,” Bernice says. “A particular scientist with a particular focus. It seems quite fanciful now, but the things that affect you as a child help shape your future. Even more than the type of scientist,” she continues, “was the type of person.”

The book Nat had read had been about love winning out over hate, about the universe of cruelty and conformity and the bending of time and space. But goodness had been part of it.

“I have never believed in God,” Bernice knocks her head softly against the wall behind her, holding her ribs as she stretches her back painfully. “But I do believe in humanity. In doing good for the greater good. I think if that can be the point of my life, then that’s worth it. Can you help me?”

Nat is careful with her answer, if honest. “I’m capable of redirecting,” she says. “I can make decisions in the field without approval.”

Bernice mouth turns up. “You’re management.”

“I wouldn’t put it that way.”

“Redirecting.” The weight of what Nat is suggesting sinks in. “Meaning you could choose to eliminate me.”

She nods once. It’s enough.

“So that’s why they sent you, but why are you here dawdling and conspiring with me instead? Why...help me?”

She’s even more careful with this answer, but equally honest. “Your work is your responsibility,” she says finally. “What you put out there in the world. You’re taking responsibility for the outcomes.”

Bernice offers her hand across the table, and Nat shakes it. The rest is mere strategy and planning, which is to say, Natasha spends the next week laying trails and building a cover, trying to give this woman a crash course in the kind of infiltration and deep operations she used to specialize in, and can now only coach and handle from afar. It’s thrilling and terrifying how much she’s risking, working without a net, sending this woman into the dark to disrupt from within. But there is no one better placed, and it may be the only way to dig out all the rot.

~*~

Pepper mentions in passing on her way through the kitchen, “I let the Manor staff know to expect you this afternoon.”

Tony’s lips jut out, but he gives a tight nod and waves the topic off, sealing the travel mug and letting her snag it on her way out the door.

Tony doesn’t mention Long Island again, but there's a heaviness to his bearing all morning.

When Tony is still plugging away toward noon, fussing with Bruce’s math on one of the nutritional aid delivery projects he's got in the queue, Bruce takes off his glasses and asks, “Do you want some company?”

A flash of relief passes over Tony’s face and then is gone. “It's your chance to see the haunted remains of my familial legacy.”

Bruce rolls his eyes.

“I wouldn't mind,” Tony concedes.

The Stark mansion had largely been given over to the Smithsonian, along with a trust for it’s upkeep and expenses, but they had never quite figured out what to do with it. Howard Stark was a problematic legend. How do you find the proper historical context for the man who'd shepherded Captain America to life and then helped create the A-bomb? Ultimately, curating a story about America’s love affair with weapons of war had proved too challenging, maybe something they’d tackle in a generation or two, but in the meantime they sure as hell weren’t going to leave the real estate unused.

The east wing is offices, curatorial labs to sort through and store papers and artifacts, the odd scientific specimen. The rest is a mishmash of storage and living space still reserved for family. Which meant just Tony.

In a marble and carved oak entranceway, under a leaded glass chandelier the size of a small car, Bruce hunches his shoulders into his corduroy jacket, like the ghosts of the wealthy and upper class are peeking through time to glare at him. It gets worse as they move through a living room with galleries above, Persian carpets below, and reading tables so massive they feel like old growth tree trunks. Staying in the tower is surreal enough, a chrome and glass future above a sea of twinkling light, but there’s...always a sense of forward momentum in the tower. 

Imagining people actually living in this petrified monstrosity is getting to Bruce. The building materials alone are priceless, not to mention the amount of work and craftsmanship sunk into it.

“Howard was a damned pack rat, so when they moved into the city Mom just said _fuck it_ and bought new furniture. So this is his Gothic-Neoclassical bachelor phase.” The dust and Tony’s biting commentary aren't making it any better, echoing up the wide staircase and down a vaulted corridor, through rooms overstuffed with tarped furniture, and banker boxes, and cartons made decades ago when they made cardboard thick like plywood.

They make their way into the old master bedroom, wading through wardrobes and closets still hung with clothing sheathed in garment bags, like you could step through to Narnia. Or the nuclear age.

Tony unzips one to reveal a carmine red dress, frail silk with tiny crisp pleats.

“She wore this when they met Kennedy,” he says, and fingers the hem. “The institute has the formal portrait, but they sent Mom some casual snaps that we’ve got in an album. Fuck,” He turns to Bruce, dusty winter sunlight turning his eyes a mellow mahogany just as rich as the decor, “do you think Hydra killed Kennedy? God, Dad would have been pissed.”

It's been like this for two hours: segues and biting heartbreak.

Bruce isn't sure Tony has an endgame in mind, just that he wants to give Steve something worthy. It's sort of charming, in a way. Like a kid looking for the prettiest rock on the way home, to give to his mom after school.

Eventually, they make their way to what Tony calls _the card room_ , which is a riot of treasures--a Tudor headboard, a delicate white painted dresser with flaming gold trim, a spinnet, a spinning wheel, rolled rugs, an embroidered settee, and boxes and boxes of unlabeled memorabilia.

Bruce can’t help but blurt, “Am I in the fucking Vatican?”

Tony has the grace to look abashed. “I moved the paintings into proper storage, and then just…”

Bruce runs his fingers over yellowing cellotape. “Built something all windswept concrete on the opposite coast.”

“Googie-modernist, but...yeah.”

Before Bruce had moved in with his aunt, she taken him back to the house to get his things. A looming stack of meager boxes remained in the cramped living room; all the furniture still usable had been sold. Anything valuable, they'd already gotten rid of long before.

Aunt Elaine had marked the boxes by family member--Brian, Rebecca, Bruce. He had opened one of his mom’s boxes, seen her shoes, and closed it quickly. And then told Elaine there wasn't anything he needed. He has no idea what happened to any of it. Maybe it's in Elaine’s basement still. Probably it's all long gone.

He doesn't know how Tony can stand this.

Tony hands him a tarnished silver letter opener. Bruce slits the ancient tape on a box marked _Powder Room_ , pulling back the flaps to reveal a punch bowl tucked into a folded nest of linen tablecloths and napkins. Bruce hauls it out. It's heavier than it looks, cut crystal in a flower pattern that makes it hard to hold, gilded handles and base modeled to look like iris buds and leaves.

Tony glances up from the box of old lab equipment and his face makes Bruce want to dash the punch bowl to the ground.

He doesn't elaborate though, just goes back to sorting wooden test tube stands and rusting tube clamps. “Christ, Howard didn't even do chemistry. I can only imagine the shit he got up to with these.”

Bruce nestles the bowl back into the linens.

Tony holds up a display box of glass electrodes, beautiful in their simplicity. Bruce leans forward, runs his finger gently over the thick blown glass, and can’t help picking one up. It has a flat flared tip like a frog toe, pale green from the uranium doctoring the borosilicate. The metal seal feels solid, and he wouldn’t be surprised if the vacuum was intact.

“It’s like looking back at another world, the one that brought us here.” Bruce knows it sounds a little silly, but he can’t help the sweeping nostalgia.

“They could be part of the original project,” Tony says, thoughtful. “The little conductors of electricity that brought FrankenSteve to life.”

“Frankenstein was the scientist,” Bruce chides, absently scrolling through the functions of his watch.

Tony shrugs. “No one remembers.”

“Just barely above background radiation,” he wonders aloud, pulling his watch off to set down next to the tube, to get a reading away from himself, “I wasn’t expecting subtlety from Howard Stark.”

Tony clears his throat. “Anyway, take ‘em if you want them. You can feed your nostalgia kink.” 

They keep digging, through loose ends of experiments and equipment, most of it connected indirectly to Project Rebirth, but nothing that would do Bruce any good. It’s all false starts, and copies of existing declassified documents. There’s nothing about the serums. The only other artifacts are a board with frayed rope segments nailed to it, and a few files detailing poisons and sedatives and the effect of electricity on the lab animals that had been injected with the serum. The ropes were different blends of fibers compounded with wires alloyed with vibranium, lined up to compare the breakage points.

Solutions to a super soldier experiment gone wrong.

It’s almost enough to make Bruce laugh. They really had no idea just how bad it could have been.

Tony finally finds something he doesn’t immediately toss aside: a series of framed sketches, hand-drafted exploded diagrams of the first real bestseller in the Stark Industries weapons division. A bomb detailed in India ink, fat and shiny, replete with destruction.

“He and Obie both signed them,” Tony says. “They each had a set.” He slides his thumb down the side of the glass, along the crisply cut mat in a deep shade of blue, “I burned Obie’s.”

“Trade secrets?”

Tony shakes his head. “Not for decades at least.” He stands up. “And somewhere in this mess is a chorus girl uniform cut for a super soldier. I have only heard tell, but I want to believe.”

Bruce stands as well, dusting himself off, ready to follow Tony to the next room.

He looks over his shoulder at Bruce. “Maybe bring the bowl. You can put oranges in it. Or condoms. Or orange condoms. I assume you two are practicing safe bomb disposal.”

“Do I really need to answer that, as we’re looking for a uniform that I'm only half convinced is for this auction?”

“With that bite mark on your collarbone, yeah. You probably do. Besides, the uniform is for Pepper.”

Bruce still isn’t convinced that means Steve won't be wearing it, and he decides to quit while he's ahead. But he does take the punch bowl and the shadowbox of electrodes. 

They're driving back to the city, bowl in Bruce’s lap, uniform, drawings and the box of lab equipment in the backseat when Tony reaches over and flicks the bowl. It gives a clear ping and Bruce tightens his grip, feeling protective.

“My parents never stopped bickering about that damned punch bowl,” he says finally, navigating the road into Manhattan effortlessly despite the traffic. “It was a wedding present.”

“You’re serious.” Bruce can’t help but ask, “How do you argue about a punch bowl?”

“It was from Brooke Astor--old New York aristocracy, very big philanthropist but the money came from a widowhood that was possibly more convenient than tragic. Dad swore it was a regift from one of Brooke’s weddings, and a backhanded compliment to Mom. He didn’t care that they looked down on him as upstart nouveau riche, but he hated the insinuation that she’d married him for money. Mom, on the other hand, was amused by it. She kept it on the bureau in her office at the Foundation.”

“You should keep it,” Bruce says.

Tony shakes his head. “Who drinks punch?”

~*~

_They say he left his home with only five strands_

_Are you okay? You've got your head in my hands_

_Would you go with me?_

_Could you sing a song?_

_I've brought my own clippers, darlin'_

_It won't be long._

_\-- **The Heads**_

~*~

“You ask me if I’m comfortable setting this asshole up take the fall,” Bernice shakes her head one afternoon, “but he’s not a scapegoat if he’s actually guilty.”

It’s sleeting out, pellets of slush pelting the windows in the woman’s back kitchen.

“They’re predisposed to side with him, though.” Nat closes the laptop and takes a deep breath. “To sell this, to use this to get the access you need, you’re going to have to demonstrate moral flexibility, reassure them you’re a company woman through and through.”

“Show them I’m compromised in a way where they think they own me.”

“Exactly.”

Bernice walks to her fridge and pulls a lock box out of her crisper. “I’ve given that some thought. And I’m half hoping you veto my proposed solution, because it scares the shit out of me. But it’s also kind of elegant.” She sets the box down on top of the closed laptop. “I suspect you’re the kind of gal who’d appreciate using the master’s tools to tear down the house. Aren't you, Romanoff?”

Natasha looks up sharply.

“Damn, I was still only eighty percent sure until just now, when your face went blank. It’s amazing what you can do by holding your features in a different way, even without the color rinse.” Bernice still looks like the weary down-to-earth science auntie she always has. “I’m sorry to startle you. I can still call you Nikki if you prefer. Does it help if I tell you it makes me trust you even more?”

“An Avenger on your side?”

“You think I care about brand recognition?” She waves this off, annoyed. “When I had the hunch, I stopped at a library out in Shaker Heights. I looked up footage from the Senate Select Committee last year. Among other things.”

Natasha forces herself to keep meeting Bernice’s frank gaze.

“You know what it means to clean up a mess. To play hardball with bureaucrats. I’m glad to have _you specifically_ on my side.”

Natasha sorely wishes she could turn this whole thing over to an agency, this woman needs more than just one person watching her back from afar...but between AIM and Hydra, the inadequate fallout at Hammertech, the active rehabilitation of Thaddeus Ross’s career...the closer she plays this to her chest, the safer this woman will be.

It’s near midnight when Bernice is ready to go, stretched out on a recliner, the coffee table next to her covered in medical supplies at the ready. She’s wheezing faintly with every breath, not wanting her meds to interact.

She talks Natasha through placing the cannula in her vein, taping it down, and hooking the bag of dextro-saline from the top decorative loop of an iron plant stand. She hooks a second, smaller bag below it. Bernice takes the needleless syringe from the lock box, a cocktail of catalysts and factors she’s been developing for years, that’s still years away from anything close to an ethical human trial. She adulterates the smaller bag, and sets it to feed into the main line with the turn of a stopcock.

“So, in the interest of full disclosure,” Bernice twiddles the tubing, fingers aimless but for once not shaking, “there’s a non-insignificant chance this will just flat-out kill me.”

Natasha has several plans in place, all the documentation and evidence backed up to at least make a dent in Akesotech, but she’s not cheered by this admission. “Care to quantify ‘non-insignificant’?” 

“Not really.” Bernice reaches up decisively and opens the stopcock to a steady disco beat drip, muttering wryly, “Never get high off your own supply.”

It takes a while to hit after the bag is empty, but when it does her face contorts with pain, hands spasming as she clutches her ribs. Sweat rolls down from her temples, and the wheeze turns sharp. Though she’s born witness to Bruce’s transformation, Bernice’s crisis is hard to watch.

It occurs to Natasha that she may be witnessing the birth of a supervillain--may in fact be helping to create one. She helps the woman change into a dry shirt, wraps a fresh blanket around her when the shivers start up again.

“I don’t want to die here,” Bernice says. “I have too much to do.”

“That’s the plan,” Natasha says, “so follow through.”

When Bruce fights the change, agony twists across his face, and it horrifies and sings in Natasha. It’s not a pain she ever wishes to cause him; it’s an anguish she understands.

Bernice Kikkert’s torment is much the same, an unnatural transformation, manipulating the body into making choices it was never designed to make. It’s loss and gain. Rebirth presupposes death.

If she’s honest, she sees the same beautiful, terrifying misery when the shift works the other way, the alarm that wracks the Hulk’s features, the terror of disappearing, of being unmade. Natasha breathes through that fear every day.

Kikkert has walked these seemingly safe paths, joined institutions that promised her room to work, support, safety, and encouragement. Yet each has betrayed her, assuming she couldn’t do anything about it.

Those people, those institutions? They will learn. The consequence will be Kikkert working her own long con, her own agenda, ruthless and determined. Natasha is setting her free, she hopes, to be the karma she wants to see in the world. It will be dangerous, but danger is hardly the worst thing.


	4. 12" Remixes

### 12” Remixes

_~*~_

_I was always thinking_

_Of games that I was playing_

_Trying to make_

_The best of my time_

_\-- **Neil Young**_

_~*~_

“What Steve really wants is for Thor to show up, all gleaming in his armor and smiles, and charm the donors into a sense of noblesse oblige. But he thinks saying it would be an insult, so instead Thor keeps suggesting things and Steve keeps listening with this look like he swallowed a cricket ball. Or maybe a live cricket.”

“That is an oddly specific metaphor,” Bruce murmurs, preoccupied.

Tony declares, “Thor has to be trolling Steve,” as if this conclusion is controversial.

Bruce hasn’t glanced up during the whole litany of Thor’s proposed contributions to Steve’s charity auction, but this finally drags his eyes off the spectrometer screen. If nothing else, he’ll need to clear this topic out of Tony’s buffer before changing the subject. “The cage match idea didn’t give that away for you?”

“I thought he was scaling it back, since Clint chimed in about the animal cruelty issues with bear and/or python wrestling.”

“To be honest, I’ve only been paying attention to this for Thor's anecdotes.” Among the proposals had been _re-enacting feats of his youth_ , including stealing gold from giants, crossdressing, epic fishing, and equally epic harp-playing. Bruce isn’t sure if these are jokes, or fairy tales, or a horrifying combination of both.

“Here’s another story for you: he’s offered to ‘hallow and bless marital unions and make them _fruitful’_.” Tony strolls up to the bench, hands in his pockets. “With his _hammer_.”

Bruce muses, “How would that even work?”

“Meanwhile, what the hell are you even doing?” Tony flaps a hand at Bruce’s bunsen burner, still cooling, and waves around the loop of platinum wire like a bubble wand “Flame tests, really?”

“Methodical is soothing.”

Playing around analyzing the haul of specimens and artifacts from the mansion has been an idle project for them both, but curiosity for the sake of it is such a luxury for Bruce that he feels giddy. By necessity he's a creature of plain habit amidst chaos, but without the disruption of an assembly, he’s had to double down on those habits to keep focused. He can’t afford to work himself into a stupor of dodgy nutrition and overnighters, at least not often. Unexpected projects and intellectual detours offer a non-threatening thrill to push back against, to keep him engaged with the ascetic momentum of meditation, routine, and control so essential to (everyone else’s) survival.

Plus, it’s the kind of casual hobby that helps distract him from the fact that his other casual hobby is seriously MIA. He didn’t sign up to worry about Natasha Romanoff, to wonder where she was, to miss her.

Funny how that’s happening anyway.

“JARVIS could have run this for you.” Tony sidles up to the spectrometer. “Though I hear vibranium salts flare the same color as magnesium.”

“Slightly bluer, and the line spectra are entirely different. Take a look,” Bruce says, though Tony’s mouth has already dropped open from the spectrometer readout, “The purity of the metal is phenomenal considering how fine the wires were drawn.”

“This is from the rope?”

Bruce gestures to the frayed prototype samples nailed to a board.

“Fuck you, Howard,” Tony jabs at the screen and starts flicking angrily through the display. “That is way more vibranium than your notes specified.”

“From my calculations, once they were reassured Steve turned out golden brown and delicious, it went into the shield instead.”

“But it would have taken all of that mass to make enough rope length to lock him down.” Tony has the grace not to mention his own safety net project, originally commissioned by SHIELD and now being refined in case a Code Green spirals out of control.

Bruce had been hoping this tech would be a viable alternative to what had been called Hulkbuster but was now three times as complicated and referred to as Veronica. But even expertise on vibranium was hard to come by outside of Wakanda, much less the metal itself in any quantity, and so this was a played out dead end unless they wanted to melt down Steve’s shield.

Tony plunks down in a rolly chair, sailing in gentle arcs across the floor to dissipate his nervous energy while Bruce shuts down the equipment and tidies up his space.

“So what’s America’s Sweetheart signed you up for? He won’t tell me.”

That does sting a little, but Bruce brushes it off. “Nothing.” Maybe he'll go shopping this afternoon, get out of the lab entirely. Pick out something interesting for when she gets back. “Hey, did you know he asked Thor if he thought Jane might participate?”

Tony doesn’t take the distraction, repeating flatly, “Nothing,” 

“Seriously, Tony, it’s fine. It makes sense.” Bruce doesn’t ask what it is that he could possibly offer. Stilted conversation? Frustrated political arguments? He can’t even dance beyond the box step and a couple Bollywood moves he’d picked up from coworkers. “Thor said he’d ask, but I think he was just being nice; Jane doesn’t have any interest in helping anyone associated with SHIELD.”

“But you do.”

Tony’s very good at staying on point when he wants to. And Bruce can’t completely deny it. “It’s not like the Other Guy’s gonna throw on a rented tux and nibble caviar. Which is what people would want. I get that. It leaves Steve in an awkward situation.”

“You’re an Avenger. You’re going to be there.”

Bruce shrugs like he’s shaking off a jacket, “This isn’t necessary.”

“You really think Romanoff is going to let you off the hook if she has to show?”

“I don’t have nostalgic appeal, or a demonstrable skill. I’m not a prince, or a captain of industry, or a captain of anything. If you’re not in any of my doctoral fields, or, well, _you_ , I’m not going to impress you with my knowledge.”

“That’s bullshit,” Tony says. “So stop avoiding Steve.”

Bruce narrows his eyes. “I’m not the one avoiding things.”

~*~

Just before dawn, Natasha leaves Bernice fitfully sleeping in her bed. Her skin is flushed, the ever-present circles under her eyes swollen and mulberry. Her breathing is deep and slow and silent, the fever and agonizing pain in her chest both receded.

Natasha had spent the last six hours nursing her and setting the last false trails and intel bombs in the Akesotech systems. She settles back into her cover identity for the evening shift, her face and her makeup carefully set, but is turned away before she can swipe into the building. The facilities staff has been let go. The research lab is being shuttered. The chief administrator has gone missing under charges of embezzlement, and the full-time staff is relocating to the main company campus in San Bernardino.

Natasha watches from afar as Bernice directs a moving crew to clear out her house. They’ve only checked in with each other since that night using online intel drops, but even from this distance it’s obvious Bernice is more sprightly, that her techniques have given her the energy to pursue her enemies where Natasha cannot follow.

~*~

It’s when the clerk just nods and goes back to her book that Bruce faces the fact that he’s become a regular customer at the adult boutique. It’s not that he’s been there on so many weekday afternoons that they let him browse and wander with only the gentlest of inquiries if he throws them a puzzled glance. It’s that he knows the book is for a class in Chinese literature.

Bruce sighs at himself, and decides to pull the trigger on the items he’s been dithering about for weeks.

He hasn’t been wrestling with shame, not exactly. This isn’t the first time he’s had to delve into his own sexuality and redefine it based on what he finds. Compared to learning how to come with a slow heartbeat in depopulated areas--only to discover that it was never the pulse rate but the emotional shit, the fear and greed and ugly wounds of rejection powering the anger--compared to unknotting the worst of several decades of complicated relationships to power, pleasure, restraint, longing...and Hulk...this has been a walk in the park. Not that Bruce hasn’t occasionally felt panicky in parks.

Thoughts of Natasha’s fingers manipulating the soft hempen rope, her keen eyes evaluating the heft of the safety shears, these have been fuel enough to keep him warm in her absence.

Working with the artifacts from the mansion has tipped the balance for him, though, made him appreciate the idea of equipment as an expression of genius, made him want to see these tools in her hands, used on him. Made him want to let her see this about him.

~*~

_Dreamt I played with fire_

_Played with the noose around my neck_

_\-- **Laura Mvula**_

_~*~_

Hill is not best pleased, but there’s nothing for that. “Akesotech is dirty, to some degree…”

Natasha jostles a shoulder and keeps contemplating the cityscape spread out below. “We knew that going in.”

In the reflection of the room, she sees Hill frown. “We're still far short of what we'd need for a grand jury, or even an inquest on the chief administrator's convenient disappearance.”

“Presumed murder.” Natasha throws over her shoulder, “And that’s a professional opinion, not an addendum to my report.”

“Don’t be so touchy, Romanoff,” Hill reassures, “Even without a body it’s far too sloppy to be your work.”

“I’d say it's probably worse than it looks, but they're buttoned down tight now.” Natasha spreads her hand on the glass, which is warmer than she expects; Stark’s windows transmit energy selectively, and right now they’re only letting the light inside. She turns to face Hill. “You'll need witness testimony, internal financial and project records, forensics. Ideally a whistleblower, or a qualified biologist to do a hardcore infiltration.”

“Two years ago, I would have left you in,” Hill argues.

“Now,” Natasha bites back, “that’s not the best use of resources.”

Hill cracks her neck. “I wouldn't have minded inheriting Nick's workload if I'd also gotten his budget and staff.”

“Yeah, we're all making do.” Kikkert’s agonized grimace haunts Natasha. She sees more of herself than she’d like to in her. Another woman who kept putting faith in betraying institutions, who’d been left to sacrifice herself for the greater good, for the chance to get a little justice back.

Natasha wonders every day if she’s fighting on the side of the good. She takes missions under Hill’s guidance, fights with the Avengers, tries to make up for the harm she’s done while knowing there’s no true restitution for the death and destruction she wrought as an agent of the Red Room...or of SHIELD. When she thinks of that second betrayal, she starts to drown in a mist of crimson rage. How to go through each and every mission, deconstruct it, find the good in the result? It’s not possible. She can’t do it herself, and Clint refuses to help. Fury’s in the wind, though he remains a whispery presence in Hill’s ear, and thus Natasha’s. Coulson’s dead and she’s absurdly grateful. She couldn’t have borne the knowledge if he’d been Hydra.

“Romanoff,” Hill leans forward, lips pursed, her _you’ve made me be concerned_ face. “Are you sick?”

Not sick, no. Worried that she’s wrong, yet again. Weary, suddenly, that all she can do is wait for a betrayal that hopefully will never come. She’s let Kikkert go with only the most tenuous of leashes. She’s lying by omission to Hill. She has only her own judgement to trust, and she doubts she’s worthy of it, and yet she’s making this leap of faith anyway.

“I’m fine,” she says. “I just need a shower, some sleep. It was a long mission.”

Hill raises a quizzical eyebrow but nods, and Natasha slips out of the room.

~*~

The bi-monthly collaboration meetings with Dr. Helen Cho have been a thing since the dummied shipping manifests Natasha had obtained in Brazil had hinted at rare earth metals being sourced and smuggled to the HYDRA-adjacent research facility Stark had blown sky high. One of Cho’s doctorates was in metalloid biomechanics, and while she was focused on the medical applications, she was one of very few scientists outside Wakanda authorized to work with vibranium.

In the interim she’d added a pilot for the team to test drive one of her tissue printers, which Bruce is thrilled about. It makes him even more annoyed to be so distracted and running late this time.

He’d slept poorly, which wasn’t unusual, so he’d eaten early and taken a kip on his couch before the evening meeting, which was the next morning in Seoul. He’d fallen into a reprise of the same dreams as the night before, Hulk dreams of chasing fanged rabbits, explosions with choking smoke, people falling before he can catch them. Bruce is still shaking them off when he gets to the small conference room off the molecular biology lab and sees Natasha sitting next to Pepper.

He doesn’t blurt out, _you’re back_ , but it’s a close thing. He’s checked by her rigid posture and the tight grey dress and severe heels she’s wearing at nine at night, instead of her usual boots and jeans. She gives a slight nod at his obvious surprise, then turns back. Even her hair is pinned up smooth and tight, her whole demeanor like she’s there on business that he doesn’t have any part of.

Bruce snaps his mouth shut, and makes a quick cup of tea at the sideboard while Tony sweeps into the room and JARVIS brings up the link to Dr. Cho. A part of him is relieved to see that Helen looks as frazzled as he feels, and the reflexive guilt of that thought grounds him even further than the blur of stone and red in his peripheral vision.

“I’m sorry,” Helen finally says. “I don’t mean to be distracted. May we pause briefly?”

She takes a sip of water, and it’s Pepper who leans forward like they’re in the same room, and asks Helen what’s wrong.

She gives a small shake of her head, and simply says, “Difficult news about a former colleague.” 

Curiosity sparks Bruce to look up. Tony cuts in. “Don’t keep us in suspense. We know what an incestuous lot the cell manipulation world is.”

A faint blush steals across Helen’s cheeks. “Dr. Bernice Kikkert,” she says. “We heard this morning that she’s under investigation.”

Natasha’s jaw twitches, and that’s more of a surprise than anything Bruce has heard so far. He knows Kikkert--three of his papers with Betty had cited her work on tissue and organ regeneration processes--but even if Natasha kept up with that field, Kikkert was no longer on the forefront.

Bruce asks, “What are the charges?” 

“Nothing they can prove,” Helen says, fierce and a little hurt.

Tony’s fingers fly, and a small news item from PLOS ONE pops up about the NIH Office of Research Integrity looking into scientific misconduct in Dr. Kikkert’s previous academic work, which had been federally funded. God knows what she might have been up to in the privately owned lab she’s been at since.

“The rumor is that she discovered something revolutionary, but that she’s been testing it on human subjects.” Helen pauses and looks away from the camera, away from Bruce, and her voice is banked once more, “testing on herself.”

“Oh.” There’s not much to say to that. 

~*~

Sometimes Banner’s big doe eyes trigger Natasha’s worst instincts, like kicking puppies or damaged scientists when they’re down. She has always been aware for her capacity for cruelty. You don’t survive as a spy without it, without a keen understanding of how to use it. It’s never alarmed her before.

Right now he’s looking at her across the communal kitchen island with a mixture of curiosity, concern and compassion that’s stirring an urge to punch him in that lush mouth.

The rumors had circulated quickly about Kikkert, but an ethics review meant the scientist wasn’t dead, was in fact settling into her cover. She’d mentored Cho during a post-doc, and because she’d been a valuable channel for the initial leaks, she’d been adamant that her mentee be left out of the loop. It’s good that her rumored defection from the straight and narrow has trickled down to Cho, it means she stands a chance to get the goods on the power structure at Akesotech. Natasha can admit relief at the news even as the small coal of worry flares hotter.

“I really need Dr. Cho here in person,” Tony is saying, “if only for a day or two. At least long enough to tempt her with sweet, sweet lab space.”

“She’s got a pretty sophisticated setup in Seoul,” Bruce chides, though he’s still watching Natasha from the corner of his eye. “She’s head of her facility. Authority, prestige, resources. She doesn’t need to give it up, even for sweet Stark lab space.”

Tony snorts and his coffee sprays the counter. Pepper tosses a dish towel at him. She’s removed her shoes, casually sipping sparkling water in stocking feet. Natasha wiggles her toes in her own heels, which are higher than necessary just as her dress is tighter. Or maybe it’s just been a long time since she’s worn this particular outfit. Pinned in, buttoned up, showcased in a locked display like jewelry. 

She’d craved the costuming going into this meeting with Dr. Cho, with the team, had wanted to feel like she was still in character because this part of the mission was not quite over. Except instead of feeling professional, Natasha feels like a caricature. Some sleep, some training, re-establishing a routine within the tower should have helped rebalance her equilibrium. It hasn't. She understands now that she was foolish to think she could put this mission to bed like any other.

Natasha is in for the long haul with this one. When did she start collecting desperate, self-experimenting scientists? She glances from Stark to Banner. She’s as bad as Clint for taking in strays, isn’t she?

Pepper runs a finger along the rim of her glass, and the delicacy of her question mirrors her touch. “Dr. Cho’s colleague, the review board objects to her experimentation methods. I wonder at times if you'd pass a review.” She directs this to Tony, but it's Bruce whose ears turn pink, whose chest flushes.

It's a shade she really has come to admire.

“Engineering prototypes and gene manipulation aren't the same thing,” Tony explains, and Bruce interjects, “We send everything requiring a human trial to an institutional review board. We aren't savages.”

Then he and Stark look at each other and the laughter is unnerving, but also clearly warm. It hurts to hear it.

She’s thought of seeking out Bruce, letting this thing they’re building wash away the ugliness. She hasn’t been able to act on that craving. The prospect of comfort is unwelcome--too simple even if she knew how to ask for it. She wants more of a...sounding board, a moral wall to bounce things off of. Clint’s at the farm, and besides this isn’t really his purview. Steve has a more black and white approach, but she’s uncomfortable burdening him with secrets.

Bruce has the strongest grasp on moral flexibility, but he uses it as a blunt instrument to beat himself with.

Natasha wants to be told she made the right call, and no one can do that for her. Instead, she’s been trying to convince herself. Her laptop is now littered with variations of her own damned files. Even redacted she’s got enough to review, to audit her work for SHIELD--running to ground her percentages of hero and villain. So far, it’s about even.

“Natasha,” Bruce says gently, reaching out because he can’t help himself, she can see it in the set of his mouth. Reading something in her expression and responding. “It's okay. We’re really not that bad.” But it's Bruce, so he sounds less reassuring and more like he's apologizing for genocide.

She thinks it would just take a gesture and he’d follow her to her rooms. She could salvage the night by repurposing her outfit. Gouging a painted nail into a tender nipple, pressing a stiletto heel into the soft silk of his scrotum. She could cause true agony.

They’re hardly playing at traditional sadism, but she bets he wouldn’t balk at kissing her feet. If she doled it out carefully he’d do his best to take it. Those soft brown eyes would turn dark as he went inward, as he reached for the part of himself that wanted to give her things beyond his capacity. Pushed that far, who knows what would happen...to either of them? For all their glorious exploration, Bruce is the wrong person to risk that kind of violence with, even if she admits to herself it’s a little bit of the thrill. It’s also the best reason of all to stay away right now.

Shame and desire make her shiver. But her shame is greater, by far. Humiliation has nothing to do with what’s between them.

“Really,” Bruce soothes, setting his open hand on the counter between them.

Natasha realizes everyone in the kitchen is looking at her. She fights the flare of aggression, and the urge to flee that follows. She also discards the chance to be flip--this is a group that will see right through that tactic. Instead she keeps her features even and loosens her posture. She puts on the guise of composure. “I’m just beat. The last job was longer than expected.”

She leaves her tea on the counter, unable to give Bruce anything else to work with.

~*~

There’s a plate of rice krispy treats on one side of Pepper’s desk even though it’s barely ten in the morning. Steve holds down the other corner with a propped hip, obviously trying to figure out where to put his hands. He ends up crossing his arms uncomfortably over his chest.

Tony is nowhere in sight.

“So,” Bruce says slowly, feeling flanked, “you wanted to see me?” JARVIS had put a meeting in his calendar to join Pepper for coffee. He assumed it was about Tony, or the visit to the mansion. Seeing Steve here, looming like he’s ready to dole out a suspension at the principal’s behest, immediately puts Bruce on the defensive. This doesn’t have the look of a Stark-inspired confab.

Pepper frowns at Steve’s posture and then stands up, coming around the desk completely at ease.

Bruce counsels himself not to run, even if she offers him sweets.

“Before you say no, I’d like you to listen to the full proposal.” Pepper takes a seat on the ivory sofa to the side of the room, gesturing for Bruce to sit. He does so, mirroring her angle. “Frankly, I should have been tagged in earlier, but we’re working on that.”

Steve coughs and darts to the coffee service to bustle with cups. None of this helps alleviate Bruce’s confusion or mounting agitation.

“More communication,” Pepper says, “solves a lot of problems, wouldn’t you say?”

“Don’t take this the wrong way, Pepper, but I’d prefer if you’d cut to the chase.”

“I was trying to keep this from being a chase.” Her dry amusement speaks to him better than her delicacy. “But thank you for proving my point. I’d like to sponsor you.”

Bruce looks between them, curiosity burning off his annoyance, “Is this an...intervention of some kind?”

“No, that was earlier,” Steve sets down mugs for all three of them on the coffee table, and pulls a hassock under his ass. “I’m sorry to have left you hanging about the auction, Bruce.”

Before he can draw breath to start backing out of this conversation, Pepper tags in.

“Online chat interview, just an hour, during the event. I’m donating money for each question you answer.”

“Stark Industries is paying me to do an AMA?”

“More like celebrity Jeopardy,” Steve says, “playing for charity.”

“And it’s not SI, I’m breaking out my own checkbook.”

Bruce shakes his head, disbelief warring with a sparking warmth. “How much per question?”

Steve hides his smile behind his cup. Pepper tilts her head, ponytail flicking. “Haven’t decided. We could use that as a way to steer the questions, don’t you think?

~*~

_I can dim the lights and sing you songs full of sad things_

_We can do the tango just for two_

_I can serenade and gently play on your heart strings_

_Be your Valentino just for you_

_\-- **Queen**_

~*~

It’s the lingering wry amusement, tinged with heady anxiety, that finally kicks Bruce into gear. He’s not sure who came up with the idea -- Tony mentioning something to Pepper, who’d mentioned it to Steve, who had been scouring the social norms of the internet perhaps. But it’s left him wanting to share the absurdity, and maybe the tiny hint of cynical warmth at the way they’ve crafted a way for him to contribute. He knows exactly who’d most appreciate the effort, who’d find the humor in how these people expressed their rough kindness.

He’s been giving Natasha space since she returned. Or rather, she’s been keeping herself isolated and he hasn’t pushed. 

Bruce is familiar with the variations of her post-mission routine, even the ones that don’t involve him. She sweats out her aggression on the heavy bag, or pummels her frustration into Steve. She holes up with Clint to presumably talk it out, or maybe watch cartoons and soak up his cheerful harassment. From Bruce, she seeks a different sort of decompression and care. This time, she hasn’t been doing any of these things to his knowledge.

They’ve laid patterns atop that, watching movies and hanging out, fucking whenever, but it’s the break in the post-mission habit they’d established that concerns him. He doesn’t think it’s a message.

Normally she’s the anchor in a room, unless she’s making an effort to disappear. In the meeting last night, the hollowness of her presence hadn’t even felt like effort, but like she had drawn herself inward to work through something and then forgot to come back. If she’ll let him, he’d like to help, and he’s getting tired of waiting for her to ask.

He’s missed her. If nothing else, it feels worthwhile to tell her, to show her. She could kick him out, say she’s not interested anymore. He’d accept that. But it’s starting to feel dishonest not to reach out. Not to give her the slim, shining box, wrapped in black silk ribbon, waiting on his bookshelf. He’s still not sure he’s ready, but it’s the best pretense at hand.

Natasha opens the door, glistening with sweat, tight compression leggings and a sports bra baring pale flesh, cheeks flushed, hair still up but messily piled instead of sleekly pinned. 

The yoga mat unfurled in a sunny spot in her living room gives Bruce pause. Fuck. He’s interrupting her, overshooting, letting his own impatience steer him. “I didn’t mean to bother you...”

She shakes her head and opens her mouth like she’s about to tell him things are fine, then the side of her mouth quirks as she takes in his loose pants and shirt, his bare feet. Instead she asks, “Did you need something?”

He decides the only way out is through, and takes a step closer. “I was thinking about you,” he says. “You were gone, and I missed you. Now you’re back, but you seem...distracted.”

She tilts her head. A silent admission.

Okay, he can work with that. “I’ve been thinking about...a lot of things.”

“Things?” 

He holds out the box and she takes it, stepping inside, gesturing him in.

“French tuilles?” She smirks, “Biscotti?”

He closes the door behind him. He swallows hard. "Open it."

She undoes the ribbon and lifts the lid to reveal the rope; conditioned and dyed a rich ruby red, the ends whipped with black thread.

It makes him sweaty to see her look at it.

"It doesn't have to be for now, or ever, really, if you don't..."

She looks at him, and instead of inscrutability or contempt, there’s a bright, warm spark.

"You told me to tell you, and I’ve thought a lot about it, and well... Tying up is not the same as tying down. Maybe the timing is wrong, but I thought maybe you could use a...better distraction."

She gently sets the box on the end table near the door and very carefully removes the rope, pulling it out of the skein and wrapping her hands around a length, like she does her garrote. The ringing in his ears is a handy way to track his heart rate.

“What makes you think I know anything about fancy rope bondage?” There's a low thrum in her tone, silky and curious, that belies the question.

“I don't. Or rather, does it matter? It's about the...restraint, the hold, right? And you're an expert in knots.”

She pulls the rope taut, rich red across her knuckles, and he can imagine scenarios when even tied down she’d still be able to make him hers, but neither of them are interested in those kinds of games.

What had appealed to him were the marks left by the ropes, the intricacies of the knots and the banding of flesh. The photos where there was a shared intensity between the partners, and the skin bore the evidence afterward.

Nothing gets left behind post transformation, and the idea of carrying marks of pleasure is something he finds inherently appealing. Bruises that signal tenderness. That show her he can take her painful intensity, and turn it into something beautiful for the both of them.

She must see what she’s looking for in his face because she loops the rope like reeling in a line, holding it loosely in her hand.

God, he loves to watch her focus, the ferocity of her regard.

“You trust me with this?” she asks, low and serious. “You ready to test drive this now?”

“I wouldn’t be here otherwise.” There’s bravado in his tone, but now that he’s made the leap he’s sure. Or, as sure as he can be.

“Mmm.” Her intrigue is laced with doubt, or perhaps she’s still shaking off the reserve. 

Bruce wants to get this going before he loses his nerve, so he grabs the hem of his henley, starts to lift it, and she stops him.

“No,” she says, “this time not against skin. Let’s just see how it goes…”

He wants to cup her face, moved by the care she’s taking, how much work she is allowing this to be, but he’s unsure she’d accept that kind of tenderness just yet.

“The living room,” she says. “The light’s better there.”

It’s rosy dusk, with the curtains open. Natasha moves the ornate tea tray off the ottoman, setting it on the floor. He’s not sure if he should sit or stand or kneel. It’s gone from tense to awkward to just weird, because it’s barely five and he’s in soft black sex-ninja clothes and she’s still sweaty and half-dressed and there’s this length of rope and this thready need spooling out between them. 

He’s not sure how to move forward. Natasha seems equally uncertain, confident grasp on the rope, but squinting at him as the sunset pierces the glass, reflecting off the chrome lamp.

“Please, I’m...” he blows out a breath, “I want to be in your hands.”

Her lips part, like his words have changed the pressure of the air around them, but they are true. He wants the transcendence she can offer, the way her tumult crashes into him and leaves him whole. He wants to offer her the peace that expressing her intensity brings her.

“Can I…”

He nods.

She moves into his space, rope in hand, but caresses his jaw. He folds into her touch, and she breathes, “Oh,” warmth lighting up her cheeks. She brushes the coiled length over his neck, along his shoulders. He shudders as she draws it up against his side. “Yes.”

She loops the rope around his bicep, not tying, simply drawing it over the places where someday she may bind him. She runs it behind his back to the other arm, along his chest, above his pectorals. It draws his limbs tight to his body for a breath, and the Other Guy stirs. The rope slackens, and she puts her hand over his heart. The Other Guy stills. Natasha speaks his language.

“Are you good?”

“Good.” At her expectant look he elaborates, “Visible, but slowing.”

She wets her lips and rubs across his chest, “More?”

“Please,” he says. The binding had been solid, satisfying, right before it loosened. Natasha hesitates, and he decides he’ll beg if he has to. “Pretty please.”

She smirks, and brushes her clever fingers over his nipples and returns to the rope, alive under her grip as she wraps loops around him in earnest.

She sticks to his torso and genitals, just a couple yards of one end while the rest hangs in a skein around the back of her neck like a towel. The patterns aren’t complicated, but it makes his head spin, drawing a picture of what’s to come. Wrists fastened together, fiber tight across his chest, his waist, knots a tease before slipping free. Her touch is deliberate as she winds the rope in the crooks of his thighs and under the cheeks of his ass, framing his scrotum and avoiding his cock, which grows harder with her surety of touch.

With each ghosted loop and knot Bruce feels his breath moving in, moving out, and he feels centered in the outlines of his body. The clean smell of her sweat and skin, her light confident touch on his neck and shoulders, his balls and waist, the way she checks in until finally her fingers on his chin guide him to kneel on the ottoman.

He’s fully clothed but his shirt sleeves are pushed up, baring his forearms to several firm turns of hemp against skin

He feels lightheaded. He feels a little ridiculous. He jokes, “I look like a macrame planter.”

“Hush, you,” she says, more affectionate than commanding.

“A fisherman’s net. You’ll need a giant crochet hook. Latch hook, no wait, that’s rugs...”

“Bruce.”

“This is a knotty problem you have…” he can’t stop himself, because if he deviates from the terrible puns the situation will settle on him completely, and he’s afraid that if he thinks about the edgy sensuality of her hands on his body, the wonderful, terrible promise of pressure, the thin rope drawn between his legs like outlining a runway--the control he’s given her, wants to give her--it will start to be too much. Ridiculous. Terrifying. He doesn’t want to fuck this up.

Natasha starts retracing the places where the bindings will sit, hands smooth and sure, and it shifts from play to real. The jokes dissolve in his mouth like sugar soothing hiccups.

She concentrates like she’s committing the pattern to memory, and the more furrowed her brow, the headier it gets. She holds his jaw, thumb on his mouth, and settles a twisted length of rope along his sternum, catching a handful of his henley with it. He moans because she holds it like a handle, like a leash, like something she’s claiming.

She draws closer, running her fingers along the back of his neck. She bends to kiss him, teeth scraping hard on his lower lip, tongue sliding along the seam as he opens to her. Her fingers dig into his hair and pull his head back. He gasps. The pain in his scalp is delicious, her nails, her teeth, her perfect hands raking down his limbs and pulling off the rope.

She bites at his jaw, his neck. He moans again and she sucks his earlobe between her lips, nips, and murmurs, “Thank you for the gift. And the toy.”

She traces down his forearms to dislodge the remaining turns, and drops the rope to the side. He feels like he’s been set free, dazed and dizzy. He catches at her hand like grabbing for a lifeline, and she pulls his fists to her hips.

“Wavelength,” she whispers as he leans in to her, nuzzling her neck.

“Radio,” he breathes out, and she scrapes her nails down his back like the rush is running through her as well.

~*~

_Into a heart so lost and broken_

_An angel seized the pain_

_Swallow her breath hold her to my chest_

_I feel so warm in love again_

_\-- **Adam Ant**_

**__** _~*~_

“I like these pants,” Steve’s flat expression easily reads as mild, but Natasha knows it’s mildly challenging, “they just don’t fit quite right, is all.”

“Should never have let Tony see you in that funeral suit.” She sips her coffee, decimating a crossword puzzle while he fusses it out. “Now he can picture what he thinks you really should look like.”

“Are you shouldering some blame there?”

“One, I only picked out a tie and pocket square; it's detail he notices and hence far from subliminal. Two, I cannot stress enough that I am NOT Tony Stark's wing man. He needs to work for it--in a lot of ways. Three, you're tall enough to ride that ride, but you didn't tell him no.”

“No, I didn't, did I?” Steve paces a few steps away and then back. “Tony’s tailor costs more than all the pants I own combined.”

“Then you need to buy better pants,” Tony sweeps down the steps into the living area like Fred Astaire. “How can I be the most dashing Avenger if everyone else looks like trash? I need competition to crush, or my self-esteem suffers.”

Natasha waves a hand to demonstrate case in point, both about Tony's wiring and Steve's casing.

Steve’s shoulders somehow convey sarcastic disbelief.

Bruce descends the stairs after with such an air of resignation that Natasha asks with a smirk, “Going with?”

“I got roped into this benefit, and it escalated from looking presentable to bespoke tailoring.” He shifts like he’s got an itch he can’t reach and is determined to ignore. “Pepper made me feel like an asshole for refusing. I’m not quite sure how she does that.”

“It’s amazing really,” Steve nods vigorously, “how she can talk you into something you wouldn’t even dare to imag--”

“Car’s ready,” Tony cuts in, giving Steve a pointed look, “be sure to send pics to Pep.”

Bruce doesn’t seem to notice the byplay, his resignation mellowing as he strolls over to her. She flings the paper onto the immense coffee table. They haven’t been alone since the other night, when he brought her a rope, and his trembling trust, a gift that forced her to hold fast to her belief in these leaps of faith, these battered scientists and their terrible risks and choices.

She holds his gaze.

“I know the phrase is ‘get into your pants’,” Tony teases from the elevator, “but you don’t actually have to have room for her in them.”

Bruce glances at Tony with a warmth like a quick embrace, and it stays when he looks back at her. Affection, she notes, feeling her mouth go dry.

He snags her coffee cup, finishes what’s left in it. “Come with us. Lend me your expertise.”

It’s a deliberate challenge as well as flirtation--you have thoughts about my ass, come share them in public.

She wouldn’t refuse, even if she wanted to. She loves a challenge.

~*~

Sebouh is old and tall, Armenian with a flamboyant cut to his suit and hair that actively defies the passage of time in color and texture. He shakes their hands and waves them deeper into the shop, where Anoush, his apprentice, has set out a tea service next to a patent leather wing chair.

Anoush is a short young woman with a buzz cut, skull fuzzy as antler velvet. The sleeves of her white button-down are rolled, a tape measure accenting her neck like an undone tie, suspenders outlining her breasts. Both shirt and trousers are a testament to the skill of the establishment.

The pair are a delightful dichotomy.

“We didn’t expect you to join us, Miss Natasha,” he then murmurs something in Armenian.

She responds in kind, warm and reassuring before she switches to English. “The captain isn’t really a flight risk,” she says, “but do give him some decent pants. He’ll wear them if they show up.” She thumbs back at Bruce. “I’m here to supervise this one.”

“A consultant,” Bruce fights back a twitch of his mouth, a twist of pleasure at her willingness to play along. “To counteract any of Tony’s more elaborate suggestions.”

“Anoush will take good care of you, as Miss Natasha well knows.” Sebouh steps closer with a wide smile, taking her offered hand, and kissing it with an old world charm that’s clearly a play between them both.

“And yet she reassured me this wasn’t a set-up,” Steve grouses to Bruce.

“All of my clothes are tailored, including my underwear.”

Steve’s cheeks get pink, although Bruce thinks it’s annoyance. “Big talk for someone who ditches Equipment Day.”

Even Bruce hasn’t escaped Tony’s Equipment Days, though it was worth the inconvenience of being a lab rat to now have Hulk-proof pants for missions.

Steve follows Sebouh to a distant corner of the shop, leaving Bruce to step onto the raised and mirrored platform opposite the wing chair Natasha takes like a throne, setting her feet delicately on the footstool.

It's all so civilized and precise, but it's a fiction, meant to be reassuring but having the opposite effect. He doesn’t belong here, in this room of dark wood and draped fabric, of old school artisan work. Of things made to last for generations.

Natasha flips through thick books of swatches, conferring about wool and flannel specified by micron, discussing drape and silk linings and ease built into the garments for movement. Her observation of, “He ties a decent half Windsor if need be, but prefers open collars,” descends into obtuse discussion of shirt plackets.

Bruce had been indifferent to clothes until he was poor and on the run, when he got a crash course in camouflage, durability, and comfort. He learned the way a decent coat in winter not only kept you warm, but sent a signal that you were okay and could pay your way, you could come in and have a cup of coffee and be overlooked. He learned to slit open the inside of a waistband at the small of the back, and sew in folding money, because that was the last place that would give on a pair of pants, and he never wanted to outright steal from a laundry line if he could help it. He learned that clothes make a man, but a monster can undo both without warning.

Fuck. All this work for something he can wreck in a heartbeat. All these people.

He shifts his feet on the riser, mirrored on three sides, and watches Natasha watch his ass. She sits in a shaft of sunlight, drinking tea from a translucent bone china cup. He loosens his fists, rolls the wrist of his writing hand so it cracks. Anoush leans back in her crouch, ostensibly to direct Natasha to a swatch book of shirting, but he knows she’s tacitly giving him space to get his shit together.

The fitting is a sixty minute long consultation. It’s been twenty.

“Blues are good, but saturated and warm. No banker shades.” The change in her voice is subtle, but the low breathy sweetness is aimed right at his brainstem, “Breathe, Banner. Unlock your knees,” and then she’s speaking to Anoush again, breezy to dispel the apprentice’s tension, “someone’s never been a bridesmaid.”

Anoush chuckles.

Bruce meets Natasha’s eyes the mirror, “And you have?”

Her grin is wolfish, and then disappears like a coin trick. “That’s classified.”

He wants all the stories. Even the ones dripping in carnage. But he wills his knees to relax. A vision of her in tulle and dyed heels helps. Lavender, he thinks, hideous on a redhead. He fidgets, tries to lock himself down to let Anoush work around him, measuring and marking, pinning pieces of suiting to his shirt. He suspects his tension is making her nervous. He chuckles to loosen his diaphragm, “It’s just clothes, right?”

Natasha hums, sips her tea, and asks, “Your lab coat, that’s just clothes?” The swatch book open on her lap belies these assertions; the very sheen of the fabrics speak of wealth and ease and comfort. The soft armor of privilege, the other suit that Tony fights in, and it’s nothing Bruce will ever be at home in himself, never be able to wield, or keep, or even keep from destroying.

He’s sweating. The click of a bone china cup and saucer is as loud as his breathing. Anoush slips away to a side table, becoming quickly and unbelievably engrossed in pencilling notes.

He watches Natasha approach in the mirrors. He opens his mouth to apologize, but she flicks her chin and he leaves it unsaid. She assesses him instead, her eyes marking the lines of his body, reading the chalk marks and the pins, stepping around him slowly. She runs a finger across his shoulders as if she were checking him for dust, around and along one of his collarbones, settling the tip in the notch of his sternum.

“Clothing is equipment. A lab coat, a suit, a towering pair of heels, a ratty t-shirt--these are warnings, disguises, feints. Wishes. Stories we tell ourselves and each other. Clothing is intent.”

Under the pressure of that sole finger, Bruce deepens his breathing, forces it slower. The lightheadedness recedes. “That’s kinda the sticking point here.”

She sweeps her hand up his throat to bracket his chin with her fingers and thumb. “I wasn’t kidding earlier about the underwear.”

He meets her eyes as she cradles his throat.

“Everything I wore was tailored, before, that was how I was trained. But I never thought of clothing as personal. Then I came to the US and lived in agency-issue for a year. There’s nothing like a cheap bra to convince you to be personally invested in your wardrobe.”

He settles into the sound of her voice, and doesn’t mind when she gestures with her other hand for Anoush to return. “I sought out Sebouh’s shop because of their clientele, when I went to work at SI. Yes, exactly--they don’t call you a genius for nothing, Banner.”

Clothing as a feint, as a false flag, as a way to fit in subliminally. Looking the part for Pepper and then Tony because she’d gone to their very tailor. And now here he stands under the same hands, but in this moment he changes from Tony’s paper doll to hers. He feels the flickering touch and tug of Anoush finishing her work, calculating him down to the quarter inch with chalk and pins, and it feels like Natasha is wrapping around him, showcasing him, pulling him back out of himself and into the world.

She slips her hand down to pat his chest, burying the reverence in her eyes behind a smirk. “Tighter through the seat.”

“Hey, now.”

“Ignore him,” she murmurs to Anoush, “He’s never worn clothes that actually fit.”

Afterward, she pours him a cup of tea and perches on the arm of the wing chair, and makes him choose from the swatches she’s curated.

He can still feel her cool hand resting on his throat, grounding him. 

“You let me do that,” Natasha says, when Anoush takes the swatch books away. “Let me take over, soothe you. Dress you.”

He runs his fingers along her arm. She turns her palm over, and he rests his hand in it before he knows what he’s doing. She curls her fingers around his. Maybe he should worry that the compact she’s been making with the other guy is spilling through, but it doesn’t feel hypnotic, it feels like...being cared for.

“Equipment Day,” she says, reluctant or maybe just tentative, “you and Tony can take a crack at the suit.”


	5. Unreleased Tracks

### Unreleased Tracks

_~*~_

_My fingers twist in a fist behind your back_

_If I could bend the bands of time, if I could reel it in_

_And in the mirror, who is that lookin' back_

_And I'm scared of whoever this is livin' in my skin._

_\-- **The Heads feat. Johnette Napolitano**_

~*~

The Other Guy’s roar resonates in his throat.

Bruce shoves the ground away, blinking at the granular snow gathered in the sere grass. The lakeside landscape looks like it's fuzzing out into television static. Tony sits on a log, faceplate popped up and sweaty skin steaming in the chill.

“This time was more thrash than lullaby,” he hands over a thick bundle of cloth, heavy with boots, “but we’re still in the neighborhood.”

Bruce croaks her name, and Tony gestures like he’s thumbing a ride.

“Knocked out of a tree with the Trout Thing. She wanted to wait for you to come around, but Cap deployed his disapproving face.”

“How,” Bruce squints against a wind gust, “how’d a trout the size of an RV get into a tree?”

Tony pushes out his lips and exhales through his nose, brow furrowed like he’s peeved at Bruce for even asking. Bruce’s pants are soaked, and the only ice on the armor is hoarfrost from Tony’s breath. He connects the dots. Shame floods him, followed quickly by goosebumps.

The air is cold enough that he can hear the tinny thread of JARVIS emanate from the open helmet, “ _Sir, The Lodge at Big Sandy has informed me they are now ready to welcome your party whenever they should arrive_.”

“Thanks, J.” Tony stands and brushes grains of snow from his shoulders. “Come on Banner, I already know you’re a badass. Get dressed before my balls freeze off in sympathy. Now that we've vanquished the Trout Thing, I’ve reserved the honkey-tonk.”

“Of course you have.”

~*~

The Lodge is closed for the season, which is the only reason the giant mutated fish in the otherwise picturesque lake hadn’t eaten anyone, only succeeding in gnawing through a maintenance employee's (now soiled) pair of waders.

Calling in the Avengers had been overkill, but Natasha had made the case that the lack of bystander risk made for good publicity, and that monstrous wildlife was something they should investigate as a matter of course. Clint had spun that out into a series of cryptid jokes from New York to Wyoming, and hadn’t even twigged that he was helping her sell the idea to the team.

Natasha thinks she might feel bad about that if she takes enough time to reflect, but she’s spent the last hour getting first aid, getting cleaned up, and getting the intel encrypted and uploaded to Kikkert. Now her ribs ache enough to take her mind off the ethical snags, and let her appreciate being safe and mostly sound in front of a roaring fire, mission accomplished.

It had been fascinating watching Hulk noodle the Trout Thing from the depths of the resort lake, his tightly coiled patience breaking like an overwound spring as he hooked it by the gills and flung it, roaring and shaking water off himself in triumph. He hadn’t aimed the fish at her perch in the tree--an unlucky flop from a panicked fin had dashed her to the ground. She’d felt fine once she caught her breath, had shaken herself and gone down into the hollow to lure Banner back, but the wheeze in her voice brought the Captain running as well.

She could easily allay his concerns...but when she saw the flicker of Bruce catch inside Hulk’s eyes she found herself turning away, letting Steve shoo her off to the ambulances in the Lodge parking lot as Tony landed to keep watch over Bruce.

She didn’t want to witness the agony of transformation.

She can give Bruce pain when they are alone, bring him to that intensity, thrill at how he takes it and makes it something beautiful. Suddenly that seems very different from watching his body writhe and reform and shed mass, out in the open. It demanded the dignity of privacy.

“Where’s your ice?” Clint holds two frosty glasses of beer aloft, his face such a study of parental disapproval it threatens his cover.

Natasha drags the cold pack off the table and tucks it back against her bruised ribs.

He rewards her with the beer, sits, and then says into his own glass, “Never thought I’d see you turn squeamish.”

She bristles.

“Is that not the right word? You bugged out awful quick, and a little bump like that’s no reason even if you freaked out Steve.” Clint’s slurp is muffled by foam. “Big Green’d just started doing his confused blinking thing and then,” he whistles like a bottle rocket, “you're dust in the wind. Why’d you skip his magic trick?”

Natasha braces her ribs with the ice pack as she reaches for her glass. “How can I get you to stop talking?” 

Clint drains half the glass, gives her a soulful look, then turns his head to release a heroic belch.

“Pithy.”

“There comes a time...” the gravity of his voice proves he's been hanging with Thor too much of late, “in every great love story...when lovers will fart in front of each other.”

“That’s true intimacy for you,” Natasha deadpans, “mutual gassiness?”

Clint shrugs, “It's implied,” and chugs his beer.

~*~

Bruce looks washed out and thready, tight lines gathering his lush mouth like a purse. Guilt. She wants to smooth it out, but doubts her ribs will allow much in the way of cajoling him.

“Foxtrot, mambo, salsa, and waltz,” Tony reels off.

Bruce shakes his head, “I just learned the box-step. In gym. In middle school.”

Clint shudders with a high pitched giggle. The lines ease around Bruce’s mouth as Tony rises up in mock offense to add, “Plus the hustle, and a passable two-step.” 

“Were you training for cotillions?”

“Debutante balls and bachelor brunches; society charity gigs. Mostly, we snuck cigarettes and booze and played dirty Twenty Questions in the Waldorf Astoria.”

“Fond nostalgia for the pre-coke era, eh?” Clint peels the label off his beer. “No Truth or Dare?”

“No dares allowed, and who cared about truth?” Tony says.

“Show me this middle school box-step,” Natasha tosses the spent cold pack on the table as she rises, and holds out her hand.

Bruce gives her a long, steady look. They haven’t been airing this in public, for all they aren’t exactly hiding it either, but she only gives him her game face. He nudges his glasses back up his noseand lets her pull him to standing. His body is rigid, but with caution, not anger.

In the center of the tiny parquet dance floor she curls her hand around his shoulder. She draws in a cleansing breath and lets him see her wince, as her thumb strokes the base of his own. The movement, or maybe the show of vulnerability calms him, and they travel the room with a surprising amount of grace. He lets her twirl out, then in, and his hand is very warm on her waist, leading her where he wants to go.

“Can I make it up to you?” he murmurs, keeping his gaze steady.

“No,” she says, her other thumb now rubbing in the hollow above his collarbone. “I won’t do that.”

He moves her further away from the table of bickering superheroes, and she can see his gears working.

Later, he follows her to her room, wrapping a bar towel around a fresh ice pack like he’s trying to hide it from sniffer dogs, carefully folding and tucking as she unlocks the door. Her gear bag is a mess, hastily ransacked for the mission and left open, contents spilling out, her dirty uniform in a bunch on the bathroom counter from where she’d stripped for the shower.

The itch to see to her equipment is warring with the pain in her ribs and the look of wary concern from Bruce. It’s like he’s chewing on his tongue to keep from chiding her into resting, or to be caught apologizing again.

Natasha stands in the middle of the room, and she doesn’t wince when she forces herself to take a deep breath, but it’s far from smooth.

He opens his mouth, but she cuts him off.

“I’m not going to exact penance. We’re not doing that.”

Bruce smooths the towel over the ice pack. “Okay.” It’s acknowledgement, not yet agreement.

“This is no worse than what I did to Clint a while back, and that was sparring; shit happens. That’s why we don’t have one of those _X days since last accident_ signs.”

“Actually we do,” Bruce says, diffident but warming up a little. “North wall of the lab by the eyewash station. It usually has an emoticon drawn on it.”

“That sounds about right,” she executes a roll onto the bed that looks impressive but is designed not to jostle her ribs, and waggles her fingers for the ice pack. He obliges, then fidgets about the room investigating the tiny fridge and the tinier coffeemaker. She lets him make her a cup of cocoa she didn't ask for, studying his bowed neck, his shoulders shifting.

Under his clothes all that skin is pristine again, save for the old scars that always come back, some of which even the Hulk wears. She’d chewed a mark on Bruce's forearm the day before, and had been looking forward to seeing it peeking out from under the roll of his sleeve, and the loss of that itches too. She wants to set it all to rights, set him to rights, even if she’s not ready to face the blank canvas of his skin.

“Bruce.”

“Yeah?” His hand rests atop the machine as it hisses and spits.

“Something’s bugging me.” There’s anticipation in the line of his spine, and she savors it. The moment before she commits to a trajectory is always soothing, full of terrifying possibility not yet tainted by consequence.

Bruce takes a step toward her. That's all it's ever taken.

“I was in a hurry before, and left everything a mess. I…” She swallows, the easy patter deserting her suddenly, leaving her stranded with the truth. “When I was trained...this was not allowed. I...sometimes I _leave_ it in a mess, just to prove that I _can_ , but sometimes…”

The machine sputters and Bruce efficiently shuts it down, then turns back with a charged expectancy.

“Pack my gear bag.”

He nods. His solemnity makes her mouth go dry.

“But do it sexy.” He’s not the only one who can dodge behind a joke, not the only one taking comfort in finding someone who understands that gallows humor isn’t just a tactic or flipping fate the bird. Sometimes horrible things are funny _because_ they're true.

He sets her cup of cocoa on the bedside table and sucks chocolate off his thumb at her.

“Bring it all here. I'll tell you what to do.”

“Yes ma'am.”

She tells his retreating backside, “I'm only allowing that term because your insolence amuses me.”

Natasha can’t see him in the bathroom, just the shadow of him moving as he gathers her tactical clothing, the wicking compressing underlayer that the kevlar-blended weave of the suit slides over. She hears him draw the long zipper up, methodical, and finds herself grabbing the cup and scalding her tongue with the cocoa.

He brings her suit out in a rolled bundle, sets it on the foot of the bed, and shoves her boots over as well.

“You’ll need to re-roll it, once you’ve taken out the…” she trails off as Bruce empties his pockets, laying out all the small tactical necessaries she keeps stashed in various false seams and hidden pockets.

“You forget, I’ve seen extensive footage of you in the field.” He pulls out her neck knife, a short sweet blade that rides just under her right breast. “This is new to me.”

“Video,” she clears her throat, “no one calls it footage anymore.”

His finger curls around the hook on the rear bolster, sliding it out part way for a look. She draws a light finger down into her cleavage and flicks her hand out, a demonstration of deployment. 

“I’ve taken someone’s eye with that blade,” she says quietly.

“I’ve no doubt,” he says simply, pulling a damp washcloth from the bundle of clothes and wiping the salty residue of her sweat from the sheath.

Between the ice pack and the cocoa, Natasha is running hot and cold, her breathing a challenge.

Pockets empty, Bruce brings over her disemboweled gear bag, careful not to jostle anything out of the open compartments. Her guns are already packed in their case except for the one at the small of her back--some tasks are non-negotiable as long as she’s on two feet, so she did that between uploading the intel drop and cleaning herself up--but that still leaves a large array of equipment and tools to subject to Bruce’s meticulous curiosity.

His hands are naive, his grip precise but off as he intuits the function of her climbing cam, pokes a finger into the tiny bag of concrete colored chalk, finds and deploys the charging station for the power cells of her widow bites.

Natasha explains with unfinished phrases, murmurs and half gestures, and she can’t stop thinking that she can feel his touch on her tools as if it were on her skin.

Zippers buzz like slow fat bees as he pulls them shut, everything packed to her satisfaction and ready to go in the morning, and she finally puts it into words.

“You handle them like surgical tools.”

His shrug is half a head shake, half a sigh. His only other answer is to stretch back on her bed and lay his head in her lap, and blink contentedly up at her. The crown of his head nudges her mons. She takes in a breath that stutters with a spasm of pain but that only adds an edge to her arousal.

He laces his fingers together, just over his diaphragm. It would be nothing to shove at an angle and knock the breath out of him.

“I'm still armed.”

“Are you telling me this because you think I may have forgotten?” He shifts his hips and cranes his neck back a little, and his hair scritches against the crotch of her jeans, “Or to remind yourself?”

A simple flex, a roll of her hips, and she could break his neck.

Momentarily.

His hands part, drift up and land on her knees, a gentle caress up her thighs, expertly skirting her holster around the small of her back, fingers fanning up. One hand is skin warm, the other blazing hot because she’s been icing that side. Natasha inhales, methodically embracing the soreness. Bruce scratches lightly with blunt fingernails, and he’s watching her reaction as if she is the vulnerable party here, the one splayed out, head in a trap. The tingle across the back of her ribcage makes everything shift, the arousal becoming a choking sensitivity.

He threads his fingers together like a lumbar support, and the stability of it braces her. She lays her own hands down on his chest.

He says, soft, “Why did you leave? Before I came back?”

She slips her hands under his shirt, combing through the hair, “I knew you were fine.”

“I was.” He says it like _go on_.

She unbuttons the shirt. The stretch of his arms up around her cants his ribs toward the ceiling, his belly moving slow with his breath, a display of vulnerability that’s as emotionally earnest as it is physically a fraud. “Does it hurt you?”

He looks to the side, licks his lips in thought. “It hurts to fight it. But not like...it’s like how thirst can hurt, when it’s dire. The change itself is...overwhelming, but more complicated than pain.”

“It may surprise you, but I don’t want to watch you suffer. Be unmade, remade.”

Bruce’s eyes come back. “What if I ask you to stay next time?”

“You want me to watch?” She asks, “Do you think I might forget what’s inside _you_?”

“I want you to be there when I come back.”

That he says this so simply, this request for her to...handle him or welcome him back, or be some kind of goal to reach like tagging out of the action, it snags at her and makes her shift away, crawling awkwardly off the bed with her ribs seizing at her.

Bruce stays where he lays, clasping his hands on his chest once more.

“Okay,” Natasha says, busying herself with stripping down and putting on soft clothes to sleep in. She hits the room light, leaving just the small bedside lamp on. “I’ll stay. You can stay, too, if you want.”

He does.

_~*~_

_Where is the cave_

_Where the wise woman went_

_And tell me where_

_Where's all that money that I spent_

_I propose a toast to my self control_

_You see it crawling helpless on the floor_

_Someday there'll be a cure for pain_

_That's the day I throw my drugs away_

__

_\-- **Morphine**_

__

~*~

__

Natasha has an email account she only checks using random unsecured wifi outside the Tower.

__

It's full of dick pics.

__

Each one hides an encrypted packet of information from Dr. Bernice Kikkert; internal project memos, invoices, data sets, personnel records, the slow steady drip of evidence that builds a case. Each email underscores for Natasha that she made a good call, but she's also putting them both at risk by not having backup. For Bernice.

__

She's gone from working in the field alone, with an occasional partner and a whole agency waiting in the wings, to having a small eclectic team always at her back, extra eyes and ears and fists and firepower. She's got to stop thinking like a solo artist.

__

She's got to stop anticipating betrayal. If nothing else, a watched pot never boils. In the meantime, she needs to start utilizing the resources at her fingertips. Extend some trust to the good people she's found herself with.

__

She powers off the burner phone and slides out the battery, and heads back to the Tower to catch Maria.

__

Maria is not in her office, the tactical room, Pepper's office, the kitchen, or the hangar. She doesn't ask JARVIS. She doesn't put a meeting on the calendar. It's not that kind of deal.

__

Unsettled, she heads to the gym early, looking to pound it out on the heavy bag before Bruce shows up for Code Green practice.

__

Instead, she finds Pepper laying her own frustrations into Maria, who's absorbing and deflecting each punch and kick with a constant stream of snarky feedback that's strangely effective in refining her technique even as it seems to piss her off more.

__

Pepper comes to a stop, face beet red and eyes blazing like she's still flammable. Maria holds up her hand, and Pepper gives her a grudging high five.

__

“Don't look so smug,” Pepper grouses, “I hate when you do that.”

__

“Let the hate flow through you...” Natasha says.

__

“You're contrary, Potts,” Maria explains, “needling you makes you hit harder.”

__

“...soon your journey to the dark side will be complete.” Natasha hands off bottles of water to them both.

__

“It's not evil if it's consensual,” Pepper smirks. “Getting ready to paint the town red for the sake of veterans and the arts?”

__

Natasha salutes with studied sloppiness, to make Maria cringe in professional affront. Pepper's laugh rings the gym like a bell.

__

“She's developing a wicked right hook.” Maria turns, “‘Sup, Romanoff?”

__

~*~

__

A session so close to an event is usually more debrief than take down. Even so, Bruce is unprepared for Maria and Pepper lounging at the edge of the training mats as Natasha stretches within a perimeter constructed of bolsters garnished with weapons.

__

So less talking, more hitting. He grimaces.

__

Natasha pulls her head flush to her shins, arms wrapped around her ankles, then unfolds, exhaling. She grins, “You’ve got an audience.”

__

“Not we?”

__

“Sure,” she counters. “We’ve got an audience.”

__

Hill waves. Pepper looks almost convincingly contrite. “My cool down overlapped with Natasha’s prep, and then we started chatting. Maria suggested we stay and watch, since it’d be good to see someone else who’s outmatched.”

__

The itch Bruce gets at the back of his neck from guests in the gym when they train is now crawling. They look so damned vulnerable, hanging out like cheerleaders goofing off after practice, as exposed as he now feels.

__

He shrugs against the winding tightness in his shoulders, cracks his knuckles to limber them out of fist shape. He reminds himself that if this really were risky, they wouldn't be any safer down the hall or several floors below. He reminds himself that Hill's outrun a Tesseract implosion, and that, even before she started training with Hill, Potts fled an exploding Googie-Modernist house before it crashed down a cliff into the Pacific.

__

Natasha sees him already wrestling with himself. He knows there’s a lesson in it she’ll dole out.

__

In Wyoming he asked her to stay next time he comes back, for her to bear witness to the other half of the transformation. He didn't make the request lightly, but it wasn't exactly planned either. It was instinctual, born of the endorphins of come down delayed until he'd been sure she was okay despite achy ribs, that he was still in her good graces enough to lay his head on her thighs, the woozy thrill of putting her equipment to rights under her watchful eye. It had felt like giving her permission to see that side of his pain, but he sees now he was revealing that he wanted her to… and that's left him feeling stripped beyond nudity, more naked than when her big green eyes watch him come, more known than when her carefully doled out aggression opens up his senses.

__

Natasha centers her stance, calling for his attention with the first inhale of the breathing exercises. Bruce gives the two women one last glance under his eyebrows, then makes himself turn away from the discomfort, pushing their soft murmurs into a wall of white noise.

__

He steps over a bolster festooned with a shock wand, and paces around the tight square perimeter before facing off with her.

__

The weapons at the edges bear weight as reminders, for him and the Other Guy, that this is practice with a purpose. The scents of gun oil and fletching wax and something singed he can't quite place are joined by the sharp electric scent of her bites, which he can smell even when powered down once the adrenaline trickles into his bloodstream.

__

She begins the series of poses. This part has always been both serene and distracting: her calm grace, the warm glow of her skin, the way their breathing aligns. It’s still lead and follow, but is now choreography rather than classroom. As they finish the series, Bruce’s muscles are warm and buzzy and he’s able to shove back the crawling dread of being watched. She’s here to guide him, dance him across the floor.

__

Settled into the deep circular breathing, he falls into a sparring stance. He's far from blase, but he's found a meditative space despite the audience. That's the beauty of repetition. He waits for her to signal which set of practice drills they’ll be working on today.

__

Instead, lightning quick, Natasha punches his shoulder.

__

She darts back, a coiled threat.

__

His roundhouse is obscenely clumsy. She she ducks to the other side with a kidney punch that twists him, burns hard, but doesn’t do real damage. 

__

Bruce tries to use his advantage in weight and height, the bolsters hemming them in, but she’s faster, agile and fearless. She's caught him off-balance despite his training, but deeper reflexes are surfacing.

__

He rolls out of her reach and flings a forearm out to connect with her wrist. He deflects the punch in the face but she spins to deliver a quiet breathy, “Hey there,” and a whack to the shin.

__

The blows--and the words--resonate in his bones.

__

He huffs, spittle and fear and anger foaming. He turns to rush her, shoulder dropped to tackle, but he’s too slow. She jumps him like a turnstile and drags him down hard, and he's not even sure how she swept his feet, but his bigger problem is she's knocked the wind out of him and pinned him on his belly, gasping under her pointed weight on his joints.

__

Hulk roars in his head, and it sounds like brutal laughter. Like the urge to burn down the world. He rattles his cage as Bruce struggles and tries to suck air through a gym mat.

__

It was so quick -- hard, aggressive, and over in a flash. Bursting violence right in front of civilians. Unspeakably dangerous. And yet...

__

Bruce growls, shudders, pulls the burning rage tight, and grips the mat. Makes himself hang there, feeling the edge crumbling under his toes, and neither step back nor fall. The absence of her weight feels like floating. He doesn’t really hear Natasha's words but his spine snaps to the cadence, his senses imperfectly divided, washed away by a nightmare, tethered by her gaze.

__

They reach out to her.

__

She strokes along the palm. Hulk settles down again, leaving Bruce in his wake.

__

Natasha sits back on her heels.

__

He presses his forehead to the practice mat, fingers spread out to soothe the shake. Open the shoulders, Banner, breathe. The mat smells like old sweat and feet and a little like sex. It’s familiar, grounding him through the lingering turmoil. Their practice has gotten more aggressive since they started fucking, their ways of touching smearing together like fingerpaint. She's been pushing him harder and rougher, and he's been letting her, and they've been telling themselves it's training for him to withstand more stressful situations. Natasha has been a guide, leading him through danger, bringing them all home. 

__

Eventually, he presses back onto his hands and heels, releasing the tension in his hips and lower back. He's learned the hard way that he doesn't have the same bounce, has to squat and stretch so he doesn't seize up running with this crowd. With a sigh he opens his eyes to face the silence in the room.

__

Curiosity burns in Hill’s eyes, breathless concern in Pepper’s. The stripped naked feeling returns a thousandfold.

__

Bruce has been analyzing intensity, force, pain, fear, aggression, control…but these neat delineations don't exist the same way in the deeper layers.

__

Pepper clears her throat, “That was certainly something.”

__

She doesn’t sound scared. Bruce thinks she probably should. “A fucking show,” he mutters.

__

“It’s more than learning to throw a punch,” Natasha says quietly to Pepper, and he hears Maria’s hum of assent. “Fear and anger are in every fight.”

__

He’s trying to unpack a whole bunch of stuff right now about being watched and being seen and almost destroying the gym on a regular basis and how her confidence is going to get people killed and also how he wants so desperately to ask her for more, to lose himself in her control. He aches with it, like heat on a bruise, while she looks at him all chill and placid.

__

“What the hell?” He’s as turned on as he is pissed off, unnerved and aroused.

__

“It’s necessary,” she continues, now speaking to him. “Pushing your limits. Proving this for you.”

__

He looks up sharply at that. “Not your place, maybe--”

__

“Who else’s?” she interrupts softly. It’s a stalemate, maybe even a stand-off, and he wants to wrap a hand around her throat, to squeeze that vulnerable column for the presumption. He wants to find the red rope and beg her to tie his hands. He wipes down his face, leans back against the bolster.

__

“Bruce,” Pepper eventually breaks the silence again, “Are you at all interested in attending the performance tomorrow? The Noa Lem residency? Steve and Natasha are going, I’m sure they’ve mentioned it, and I have another seat available…”

__

He has to work to understand what Pepper is asking, and when he finally gets it, he wants to look to Natasha for guidance but isn’t sure why, or even if he can.

__

“The dancers are all Israeli,” Pepper explains, probably assuming he hasn't paid attention when it's come up. “They’ve all served in the military. I’ve been on the board of the performing arts company that is funding them…”

__

Natasha's discussed it, and he's intrigued by the concept but moreso by the fact she talks about it with distance, like an assignment or something equally volatile. He shakes his head because he avoids things like this--metaphor made real, visceral. He shouldn’t go. Fingertips brush his ankle, delicate heat from her skin to his. He didn’t see her move close, didn't even hear the shush of the mat. 

__

“...and I thought Steve might enjoy the way they’re making art out of violence. It occurred to me that perhaps you would too.”

__

Steve falls asleep in live theater on a regular basis, probably even with dancers transmuting trauma into art. Bruce realizes Natasha is holding very still, fingertips resting on his ankle while he crouches in a corner like a chastened dog. Curiosity hooks him, her touch giving the lie to her stated disinterest, offering him the potential for insight as she watches other people interpret their conflict into an art she's practiced herself. Would she let him see her react, or pack it away so not even the seams showed?

__

In his own audience, Pepper awaits his answer with bright cheeks and studied patience, while Hill leans forward over her knees, vibrating with shrewd awareness. She’s dying to sum up this experience, but hopefully refraining until he leaves.

__

Bruce rolls to sitting, and reaches over the bolsters for his water, unable to keep looking at them.

__

“Uh, yeah, sure,” he stutters. “I’d like that.” To refuse would be churlish, and he’s kind of done letting the two women see through his flayed skin.

__

Pepper and Hill leave soon after, hustling out like a timer has gone off on their allotted presence.

__

Only after they leave does Natasha stand and offer a hand up.

__

He helps her put back the perimeter mats and stow the training weapons in outward silence. The Hulk grumbles at him, the near miss of escape always a tease, making him pissy, but Bruce ignores him.

__

The post-practice time is as likely to roll into sex as snacks. He’s baffled where this one is going, even as he follows her. He’s not sure how to address the risk she just took, whether he even wants to, or if he just wants to go back to his suite and work on repacking all of this stuff back into his mental steamer trunk.

__

Natasha gauges him out of the side of her eyes, and slows to a stop in a juncture of hallway. Equidistant between all their options, he notes. He’s about to make a sharp remark about that when he hears conversation around the corner, coming up fast.

__

His tongue slams against the roof of his mouth.

__

Without thought he bum rushes Natasha into a meeting room, swings the door to the last centimeter, snicks the latch silently, and pulls her into the darkened corner obscured from the frosted glass panel in the wall.

__

His temples sting and his heart thumps.

__

Natasha's eyes come to rest on him as the only interesting thing actually happening, but she's silent as the conversation passes and turns another corner into the kitchen.

__

Bruce kisses her, putting all the wound up tension into it, getting her own surge in return as she squeezes his ass.

__

“Are we hiding because you’re avoiding Stark or because you’re avoiding Steve?”

__

“Can’t it be both?”

__

“Hmm,” she drags her nails down his chest and belly, and cups his balls, thumb brushing a tease across the head of his dick. She saunters backward and hops onto the table without looking, without using her hands, just a pop of the knees easy as you please.

__

“Show off.”

__

She strips off her sport bra without taking off her shirt, “Ta-da.”

__

He gives her a slow golf clap, but when he stops he can just discern voices raised in the kitchen around the corner. Tony’s braying tease, Steve’s holler of incredulity. Natasha swings her feet and crooks a finger.

__

Bruce gestures in the vague direction of her suite.

__

She slips back onto her feet, but leans against the table. He closes in, to speak quietly, to breathe in her scent. “Why here?”

__

“You chose this ground, you tell me.”

__

She doesn’t take his frustrated groan as an answer, so he elaborates, “Maybe I’m not super rational when I’m riled up without warning.”

__

She skates her fingers around the back of his neck, petting a little before she gathers a handful of his hair. The pressure of her grip hits the sweet spot, pulling his scalp just enough so the muscle beneath it relaxes and tingles. She widens her stance, and he’s so keyed up that’s all it takes for his mouth to water.

__

He tries to look at the door, latched but unlocked and right behind him, but her hand tightens a fraction. Her mouth purses open on a silent shushing sound, and her whisper is barely audible, “I’ll keep watch.”

__

Bruce feels both ultraviolet and infrared about this. Her gaze slips past his shoulder, and her tongue darts to wet her lips, an anxious flick like she’s pushing herself as well, and the balance tips in her favor. He sinks down to his knees. Her fingers soothe through his hair as he peels her leggings down by inches, mouthing the damp skin of her belly, the gnarl of scars, the curls on her mound catching in his stubble as he rubs his cheeks against her and breathes deep.

__

He loves this, the hot salt satin lusciousness, her responsiveness. He can’t see her very well from this angle, his own head blocking the edge of light leaking through the translucent glass wall, just a slice of her bared thigh illuminated. He covers it with his free hand and closes his eyes.

__

Natasha has always cued him with her fingers in his hair, twitches he tries to replicate the gist of, and it serves him even better now that she’s completely silent, only furtive ragged breathing and the wet sound of him eating her out and trying not to moan.

__

She’s keeping watch, but he’s not sure he wants her to keep quiet. He suckles her clit and rocks a couple slow fingers and notes with satisfaction when she locks her knees, when her spine curls above the jut of her hips. She’s all but fucking his face, her mouth open when he looks up.

__

He loves looking at her on the edge like this, and the fact she’s still watching the door brings him to his feet. He slides his thumb over her clit and his other hand around her nape and brings her mouth to his, sucking at her lips and her tongue until they both taste like her, her fingers digging into his forearm as he fucks her with his hand.

__

Her breath catches and stutters, her body clenches and gushes and shudders, and it’s still so fucking quiet he thinks he can hear the tick in her throat of her heart pounding.

__

Bruce doesn’t even whisper, just shapes the words, “Coast still clear?”

__

Natasha nods against his neck, gulping air.

__

He tugs her leggings back up, “Good work,” and sucks his fingers dry.

__


	6. Vault Tapes

### Vault Tapes

_~*~_

_Touch is a language, what is it you have to say to me?_

_Come and talk about it, tell me where you're locked and where you're free_

_Brutality or tenderness, our bodies are exchanged in all eternity, oh yeah_

_Touch is a language, what is it you have to say to me?_

_\-- **Suzanne Vega**_

_~*~_

Natasha manages to catch Maria prepping for a meeting with building security. She’s walking the perimeter in high heels and a severe dress, but she looks mildly relieved when Natasha quirks an eyebrow, indicates a chat. This is the end of Maria’s formal work day and Natasha should really be halfway through a shower by now, but she doesn’t want to wait any longer.

Better a surveillance stroll than a formal conference any day.

“I have a bit of an update on the situation at Akesotech.” 

Hill checks something on her tablet, fails spectacularly to not eyeroll, and says with a bored tone that means she’s dying to know, “I thought Cho’s mentor was MIA, presumed dead. Any update beyond that?”

Sometimes, Natasha really misses being part of a global espionage organization. If only for the snark. “Let’s say it’s related.”

She lays out a theoretical infiltration scenario for Hill, more Keep an Eye Out than Eyes Only, but enough to give Kikkert a way back in if something happens to Natasha. It’s the responsible thing to do.

Hill doesn’t blink, but takes in the theoretical details she passes along, keywords and key codes.

“ _Hairy Limes_ is a terrible passphrase,” Hill says.

“Biologists,” Natasha agrees. “They think in terms of bad puns and cover band names.”

She’s going to have to really hustle to be ready for the concert now, but it's worth it for the relief at sharing this.

~*~

Bruce has a new jacket and two old ties draped over his arm, ready to ask her opinion when she opens the door.

Still in her robe, Natasha looks him up and down, taking him in like she’s deciding whether to accept or refuse delivery.

Her makeup is so freshly done he can smell her face powder, a lingering trace of moisturizer, the lack of the finishing touch of perfume. Tendrils of hair at her nape curl extravagantly, not yet wrangled.

The moment draws out, verging on uncomfortable. He breaks first. 

“I can go find Steve,” he says, “Or Pepper. I was having trouble choosing…” He can feel the flush on his cheeks, the presumption that she’d help him get ready, that he’d be welcome to come collect her, that this was something they did. He finishes lamely. “I know I’m early.”

"I'm running late," she says finally.

The heat in his cheeks is no longer from embarrassment. She’s luscious like this, breasts loose under the robe, hips swaying as she shifts her weight, the expanse of soft skin a luxurious delight.

He smiles at her...and knows from the way she tightens the belt, not covering herself but running through an internal checklist of vulnerability, battening down her own hatches, that his smile is too open. Too fond. Too appreciative of the tableau of her half-dressed, him with his collar open and choice of ties in hand. It’s not the tease that’s too forward, but the casual domesticity. He nods to himself, smile faltering.

“I’ll go,” he says, and turns, but she catches his elbow. 

“No,” she says, “come in.” It takes her a few seconds, but she shakes her head, points to the couch. He sits down, puts the ties and jacket next to him on the arm.

“The one with the beakers is the right shade of blue,” she glances over her shoulder as she heads to the bedroom, “Even if it is terrible.”

He’s tightening the knot, flipping down the collars of his shirt when she returns, still not dressed. He starts to make a joke but stops.

Her robe is now open, the milky line of her sternum bright against the inky black of the fabric. Her legs are covered in silk and he sees the creamy tops of her thighs, a voyeuristic flash as she saunters towards him. It’s not until she’s right in front of him that he realizes she’s carrying a length of rope in her hand. It’s the same deep dark red that they’ve been playing with on him, but thinner gauge and floppier, silk or bamboo.

"I'm already dressed," Bruce says slowly, mouth suddenly dry, "But..." 

She shakes her head. "Not for you." 

Oh.

He pauses, licks his lip. "I thought...no restraints. You were very clear." 

"We both know it doesn't have to be restraining," she says. "And I thought, well... the idea of sitting next to you all night this way, watching you..."

His breath is ragged in his ears at the thought of that bright rope against her supple flesh, and yet he also feels a twinge of disappointment. They’ve never talked about domesticity, just desire. Companionship, even if sometimes tentative. He shouldn't feel...hurt...that it's not just a night on the town, slogging through modern dance in a small theater, amiably bored and amused, leaning on each other. 

He shouldn’t let the fact that he’s spent the last two nights in her bed mean anything, so he tries to push it ruthlessly aside.

He certainly can't deny the vision of her roped up. It’s painfully intriguing. He shifts in his seat and is awed, once again, by how even her surrender puts her in control.

But maybe he can please her as he pleases himself. Maybe that is what she’s offering instead of the intimacy of her tying his tie, him zipping her dress.

Bruce stands up and holds out his hand. She places the rope in his palm with great care.

She starts to shrug off the robe, but he shakes his head and approaches, making the half loop for the chest tie. He threads the double length around her waist, sliding it up her back, pulling it under her arms like a dressmakers tape, bringing the ends together under her breasts, feeling her heartbeat, her breath, her thrilling stillness.

He pauses, “Your dress…?”

Natasha draws the line of the collar along her throat and breastbone. “Open here, but I could wear a scarf.”

He shakes his head. He doesn’t really want to tie a harness anyway. His hands are barely steady, and they’re running late.

“No,” he says, “I don’t want anyone to see. If it’s just for us, I want that to be…” Still holding the loop around her, he takes a risk in tugging her gently foward to take her jaw in his fingers, drawing his thumb over her bottom lip. Her eyelashes flutter, and he’s pleased she's allowing him to see. 

He pulls the ottoman over and takes a seat before her.

The picture is deeply sensual all on its own, the sleekness of the stockings high on her long legs, the delicate panties, the bare skin in between. Her nipples have hardened under the robe. The scrap of black silk covering her cunt is already damp, the fabric nearly transparent. “Take off your robe.”

It slithers to the floor, and he resumes his task, circling her waist and considering the length left over. He concentrates on the work so he doesn't get lost in the span of her hips, the strength in her thighs. He starts a daisy chain down the center of her belly, pulling loops with shaking fingers. Bruce imagines following this line later that night, the red herringbone mark that will linger. He pulls the last loop through to make a knot above her mons, and splits the doubled rope to frame her cunt.

He guides her hip for her to turn, so he can run it up between the cheeks of her ass and anchor it to the loop around her waist. He tucks the free lengths, and at a tap of his fingers she completes her turn. He slips a couple fingers underneath the rope, checking so it’s not tight, that it lays flat, shifting the end knot of the daisy chain down so it rests above the root of her clit, a black cherry knot nestled in taut black silk.

Natasha brushes through his hair, a tremble barely noticeable, but just as gratifying as her breathy, “Good work.”

He’s not sure how he’s going to stand up, let alone go downstairs and make small talk with Steve and Pepper, sit through a show and a reception. He’s rock hard, and the silky red rope is stunning against her ass, accenting the flare of her hips, highlighting the dimples of the cheeks. He wants to press his lips to the swell, bite into her like an apple.

She feels this when she marks him, he realizes, this pleasant ache spurring him to open his jaw, to nip and feel the heat of her skin flush against his lips, the decadent impulse to make her hiss and squeak. He pushes through, bites his tongue instead.

Natasha takes a moment to catch her breath as he stands.

He glides his fingers down to press against the knot at the root of her clit.

“Every time I cross my knees tonight,” she says, voice is threaded with amusement and want, “it'll move with me. How are you going to make it through the performance?” 

He brushes his lips against the point of her shoulder, grateful to touch her, feel her warmth.

“I'll see you downstairs,” he says, and barely recognizes his own voice. He forces himself to take his jacket, and leave her to zip up her own dress.

In the elevator he shifts his erection and buttons the jacket. Bruce wonders suddenly how many times she’s played out the standard scene with a mark, with a target, presenting her back for someone to work a zipper, bowing her head as someone struggled with the clasp on a necklace to bejewel her. For that matter, maybe that same night playing out the theatre of struggle as they bound her and only _weaponized her further_.

It occurs to him that maybe _this is_ intimacy for them. That it would always have to go off script because the scripts are at best meaningless, at worst loaded with contrary meaning.

He adjusts the knot of the tie at his throat, that he’d half-hoped she’d tie for him, that he was disappointed to put on himself, and flashes on the other knot he'd placed just as carefully instead. He thinks maybe it is better that they’re making this shit up as they go along.

~*~

The performance is outside, which seems crazy to Bruce. There are heat lamps, but early spring in New York is brisk, surely it can't be good for the dancers?

He shifts in his seat, welcoming the distracting speculation of someone else’s discomfort. Natasha is sitting on the other side of Pepper, next to Steve, cool as ice cream in her flowing dress and camel colored coat.

"Are you not feeling well?" Pepper puts her hand gently on his wrist. “You seem agitated.”

"No, I just...new detergent. I think I have hives."

Natasha carefully crosses her knee, and all he can think of is the thin rope against her delicate skin. How much control she has to not even twitch as it rubs against the crease of her ass, her waist, the humid, heated scent of it. How she will taste later.

"Watch the show," she murmurs. "I hear it's going to be devastating."

The performance starts with a crack of lightning, and the dancers run onto the stage like furies. They are completely nude. Bruce feels another twinge of empathy.

Steve still falls asleep ten minutes in. Natasha cues him with a kick to the shin when it's time to clap.

There’s a pas de deux halfway through the final piece, two men circling and stroking, manipulating each other’s spare supple bodies. It's a surprisingly earthy expression in a story about war, the amped up desire of two lovers on opposite sides of conflict. Bruce finds himself caught up in the moment, the yearning. He wants to look at Natasha, to see her take on it.

He thinks that might be too much, too fraught. Like there’s such a buildup of static charge that even catching her eye might unleash the current.

Bruce glances over at Pepper instead. Her eyes are pinned to the stage, brow knit, her knuckles white. On impulse, he takes her hand. She lives her own war story every day, loving Tony.

Pepper curls warm fingers around his, squeezing and holding his hand as the lovers separate, as one is lost to conflict while the other stands by, unable to save him.

The piece doesn't have a happy ending, and the dancers end as they began, bodies bared to the crowd and the elements, lightning cracking again as they clasp hands across chasms and finally break apart.

~*~

Pepper hands Natasha a glass of champagne and says, “Spill.”

“Really now, the vintage isn't that bad.” Natasha smirks As a patron and VIP, Pepper selected it and then donated it personally, so the wine is actually very, very good. 

“We’d be happy to send this over for you, Ms. Potts, you didn't need to come to us…”

She smiles with largesse and shakes her head. ”Girl talk,” she says, making it sound delightful. “You know how it is.”

The waiter opens the second bottle, looking relieved as the cork slides free with a delicate pop. He pours and hands over two more glasses, and they saunter away from the cluster at the bar.

“So spill.”

“You’ll have to be more specific.”

“You really want me to ask pointed questions about your sex life?”

They are far enough away from anyone overhearing that Natasha tilts her chin. A point to Potts. She notices that Pepper didn't choose the demure phrase _love life_. They’re taking their time making their way back to the men, and the ambling walk allows Natasha to really appreciate the slickness of her thighs, the line where the rope rests between her ass cheeks, the pressure of the knot so close to the sweet spot. The distracting memory of Bruce’s hands tracing the line down her belly.

The moment she'd picked up the rope, asked to be bound, the trade inherent in that request.

She thinks about hedging...but they'd never talked about lying or hiding, they've simply failed to advertise the relationship. Or name it.

“No, not particularly,” Natasha says finally. “Although I suspect Tony’s been speculating.”

Pepper snorts. Natasha grins at her friend, charmed. “Tony’s speculating ball gags and spreader bars, cock rings and other assorted gear he's researched on the internet. Dungeons and demands. Punishing sex.”

“I'd have thought Stark would have personal experience with a ball gag.”

Pepper gives her a wry look. “If Tony’s logorrhea wasn't a turn-on, I wouldn't be sleeping with him. But, point taken.”

She waits and when Natasha still declines to clarify, Pepper prods, dubious. “So that's it? You in leather fetish gear? Bruce trussed like a turkey? Horse whips and glass dildoes?”

Natasha bursts out laughing. “Sounds like you've been doing your own research,” she says, and then shakes her head. “Are you asking to reassure Tony or because you want to know?” 

It's a fair question and Pepper doesn't pretend to look hurt. “Both. You’re my friend. So is Bruce. And I know it's none of my business, but the team is, and I don't think Steve even knows you're more than friends and I just...it's dangerous, isn't it? The two of you seem...dangerous on your own, frankly, even more so together. I don’t think...” 

Natasha thinks about the fact this woman has lost three homes to destructive impulses and outscaled risks, that she stays with Tony and offers her tower to his associates, his friends, with eyes open, and that she deserves the information and reassurance she’s not quite asking for. Nat thinks about the way Bruce breathes like a slow ocean wave when she sends a spike of pain into his system, the way his breath hitches when she pushes him over the edge into orgasm.

“Or maybe I'm just being a den mother,” Pepper sips her champagne, eyes a little distant. “I don’t know Bruce very well, but I suspect he bears a deep well of self-hatred, and I guess I wouldn’t like to see that capitalized on.”

Pepper has always had this brutal insight, this surgical compassion.

She adds, “For you either.” 

Natasha has never really gotten used to it.

Then Pepper looks to where they've left Bruce and Steve, seeing the two flustered by a trio of compact Israeli dancers talking with their hands.

Natasha lets the feel of the rope wash over her, its restraint, the way it rubs her skin a little raw, the pressure against her clit that has her blood throbbing, has been a distraction even at the climax of the performance when she wanted nothing more than to reach out, seek connection. It keeps her grounded, and she's grateful.

“I don't think it's that kind of danger,” she says finally. “This isn’t about despair.” 

Bruce catches her eye, and widens his gaze with a _please save us_ look. She smiles at him, a warm rush of heat, and pushes gently into the circle to hand the men each a glass. 

~*~

The dancers had been sent over to charm Pepper, and gotten stuck chatting with Steve and Bruce instead. When they’d left to get champagne, Steve had been trying to cover for the fact he’d fallen asleep with effusive but vague compliments he couldn’t seem to stop, while Bruce was taking evil glee in winding him up further by asking pointed questions about the concept of the piece. It’s clearly been equal parts vicious modern politics, translating rebellion and expression through movement, and Steve at his most excrutiatingly awkward ever since.

“It’s an act of love and war,” Oren, the male principal dancer is saying. “We are sent to the army. We learn how to kill. Dance translates that, lets us offer our bodies in peace.”

The heat lamps are on too high, and everyone is sweating. Wool and leather and perfumed and cologned humanity creating a stifling atmosphere tinged with champagne bubbles.

“Natasha was a dancer,” Steve says wildly, grabbing for an out along with a glass of wine.

Natasha draws her spine up straighter. She is a perfect machine for killing, and yet she also knows as well as these soldiers the power of using her body to tell a story. Sometimes that story is a lie, but it’s art nonetheless.

Oren eyes her. “You hold yourself,” he starts to say then reconsiders, and they both shift their weight at each other, movement conveying what cannot be spoken, “it really is about intent,” he finishes. Natasha gives him a tiny nod of acknowledgement.

Bruce looks puzzled and flushed, the way she feels watching him get all ebullient with science.

“I haven’t really thought about it that way,” Steve says, thoughtful. “But there are similarities. The formations, the trust, the drilling and practice and precision.”

Oren nods. “Many of us were dancers long before we were soldiers. Certain elements translated easily.”

“If you want to put it to practice, Steve, I’ll take you to class with me,” Natasha says, tone deliberately playful.

Pepper sucks in her breath a little, a showy gesture of appreciation. “I’d say I’m not alone in being willing to pay good money to see you in tights and a dance belt, Steve.” 

“The uniform isn’t that far off,” Natasha says as Steve’s cheeks pink.

Oren’s dark eyes gleam. “I’m offering a workshop this week,” he says, surprisingly earnest. “To help students develop their own dance vocabulary for rebellion. You should come.”

“You should take him up on that,” Pepper says, and the three move slightly towards one of the heat lamps as another dancer approaches.

Natasha leans in to Bruce, “I don’t think he knows who Steve is, or that he really will take him up on the offer.”

“I think Oren just likes the cut of his jib,” Bruce murmurs back. “Plus, Steve has been repentently buttering him up. It’s not his fault his desperation reads like flirtation.”

“Should we tell him Steve can’t make it through more than fifteen minutes of any type of theater?”

“Would it matter?”

He puts his hand on her hip, giving in to impulse, and is startled when she shivers.

“I’m sorry,” he murmurs, but she presses into him further to feel the rope through the layers of their clothes, imagines the sweet scent of the dye and the silk, different from the grassy scent of the hemp they use on him.

She angles slightly, so the knot at her back is pressing against his waist, and thinks about his hand wrapped in that knot, how he’ll hold her steady with it as she tumbles over the edge of pleasure.

She must give some sort of signal, because the next thing he knows, Pepper is offering gracious praise and steady good nights and someone is calling for the car. He’s absurdly grateful.

When it arrives, Natasha taps her chin.

“I think we’re gonna walk back,” she says, head tilting to include Bruce, eyes shifting between Pepper and Steve. “It’s nice out, if cold.”

Bruce follows her lead, nodding. “Clear my head a little,” he says, like that’s all it is, not the chance to further stretch out the evening, the tension, the anticipation. Or even just the time together.

“I’ll walk with you,” Steve says.

Natasha curls her hand into Bruce’s arm, teasing Steve, “I got all the protection I need, Cap.” 

“I’d be more afraid to meet you in a dark alley,” he says. “But I’d like the walk. That performance gave me a lot to think about, and I think better when I walk.” 

They can hardly say no. Natasha glances at Pepper, who raises an eyebrow and gestures like a queen. “Whatever you need, Steve,” she says, her mouth twitching with barely contained laughter. “I’ll see you all later then.”

The driver opens the door. Pepper busses Natasha’s cheek, then Bruce’s, and gracefully ducks into the town car.

Natasha still has hold of Bruce’s arm, but she snags Steve’s elbow as well. “Shall we, then?”

It’s brisk out, but not unpleasant, except for the ache between her thighs, the chafe of rope between the cheeks of her ass, and the giant cockblocking super soldier walking next to her. The ache is delicious, but she’d wanted to share it with Bruce, who is now chewing on the inside of his lip, holding back a sharpness he rarely grazes Steve with. 

The corded muscle bunched under her fingers betrays Bruce’s equal frustration. He’s riding it out though, and she’d like to reward him for it. Frustration is a liveable reaction, and he’s feeling it, but not sinking into it. It’s not yesterday’s flayed desperation. He flexes his forearm, then relaxes it enough, brushing her knuckles with his other hand. The touch sends a tingle up through her.

Steve punches the walk button, then jams his hand back in his pocket. He’s whistling, looking up the street.

Bruce tilts his head like he’s got a secret to tell her and whispers, “I guess we’ll just have to wait it out.” His eyes flick to her waist, to the brick of the building and she thinks of pulling him close, of his hands brushing across her soft belly under the cover of her coat, checking the tautness of his work, of the lessons he’s taking and making his own.

The two of them, anonymous in the city, alone in the frigid air, with so much heat between them --she’s suddenly desperate for that.

Fuck this, she thinks. Fuck Steve.

Steve whips his head back to them like he’s heard her cursing his name. Fuck everything, she thinks, because there’s an equal sort of desperate yearning on Steve’s face, and for all he’s third-wheeling her, he’s also her friend. And he needs a gentle push right now, not the hard left hook she’d prefer to offer.

She squeezes Bruce’s arm to keep from sliding her hand down to tangle with his fingers. Then she lets go and tackles the more pressing issue.

“Not that your presence isn’t always welcome, Cap,” she says, “but it’s not like you, letting a woman escort herself home.”

He looks stricken. “I feel like a tool, letting--” he catches himself on the explosive P of Pepper, shaking his shoulders like he's cold and rushing through the rest of the sentence to cover, “--Ms. Potts go home alone.”

She can see Bruce mouthing “tool” out of the corner of her eye but cannot look at him, because Steve is being so very… Steve Rogers at this moment. There’s such longing battling his self-recrimination.

“Pepper is hardly alone,” she offers, changing tactics. She hadn’t really wanted to be part of this, but she’s desperate enough herself to rationalize that acting as Pepper’s wingman was different than Tony’s. “If she’d wanted accompaniment, she would have insisted. Pepper’s no wilting lily.”

Bruce is outright sniggering now.

Steve makes a face like he wants to argue but can’t find the contradiction in terms, so Natasha presses.

“If you feel that bad, why didn’t you go with her?”

He mumbles. “Tony.” She wants to laugh because Stark really can be an answer to so many things, and then Steve takes a deep breath like he’s making a decision. “I feel like a heel,” he says. “She’s classy, and brilliant, and I don’t always know what to say to her. It makes me uncomfortable. I don’t know how she does it sometimes. He says things that sound so...compromising.”

“Tony likes to push,” Bruce agrees, although Natasha can tell that he’s only idly paying attention to the conversation. 

“Tony likes a lot of things I don’t really understand,” Steve mutters.

It’s Natasha’s turn to snigger as she mutters, “Oh, I think you do.”

He gives her a shrewd, sour glance.

The flutter of her belly as she snorts makes the rope pull against her waist. The laugh turns into a hitch and Bruce brushes her side with his knuckles. God, she so wants to lose the super-soldier and his romantic conundrum, lose the rope and feel Bruce’s hot hands on her aching skin.

She’d teased him, asking how he’d deal with thoughts of her tied for him, but it’s no easier for her with all these images running through her mind: Bruce in her living room with tie in hand, the scrape of his fingers over the curve of her ass, the look he’d given her when they’d arrived with champagne. She’s sweltering, stifling even in the brisk night air.

Something damp brushes her cheek and she looks up. It’s snowing, but it does nothing to cool her heated blood.

“Tony should come with her to these things,” Steve says finally. “I don't know why he doesn't, she’s his… he should come.”

“Steve,” Bruce says, kind in a way that makes Natasha ache. “If she'd asked him to, if it had been important to her, he would have come. This project is hers, though, a coalition of peace through art, and the attention would have been on him instead of the work.”

Steve takes that in as they continue to walk through the snow. “So why did she ask me to come?”

“She thought you'd like the idea of it,” Natasha says.

That seems to unseat something in Steve, and he thrusts his hands into his pockets, his mouth set in the way it gets when he’s formulating strategy.

Natasha settles for brushing the back of Bruce’s hand when she wants to take his wrist, kiss his palm, admire the destruction and art in the play of his grip. She’s been struck all night by her impulse to sink against him, to hold hands, to revel in tenderness along with lust. 

They both watch Steve hunch his shoulders, then straighten up like realization has taken hold.

Bruce nudges her with an elbow, and she elbows him back but can’t look at him. The intimacies between them are already too big, and she doesn’t know how to take on any more.

They’re nearly to the tower, just a few blocks away, when the sleek black town car sidles up to them. A tinted window rolls down, and Stark leans out, Pepper next to him. He presents a silver serving tray with a dome.

Stark waves at Bruce, but his focus is on Steve. “Hey Cap, you up for desert?” 

“Tony,” Steve starts, but Tony lifts up the dome. Steve crosses his arms like a disappointed parent.

“I’ve got your favorites.” Stark unveils red swirled peppermints, cupcakes with tiny flags, pocket apple pies. “All the American representations of life, liberty…”

Pepper’s throaty laugh is answered by Steve’s sour, “Don’t you mean libertine?”

“Nope,” Tony shakes his head and says, “but maybe some equality.”

Pepper leans over Tony’s lap, snagging a cupcake. “Join us Steve.” She nibbles striped frosting, and Steve uncrosses his arms, glancing back at his companions.

Natasha shoos him forward. Bruce snickers, “He’s strange, but not a stranger. You can take candy from him.”

Steve takes off his hat and steps off of the curb as Tony swings open the door. He climbs inside, and Natasha isn’t sure who giggles as the car glides into the night, soft treadmarks left in the fresh snow.

The brake lights twinkle in the distance. Finally, they’re alone.

“Well that was weird.” Bruce comments, a little stunned, and takes her hand. Despite the cold, his fingers are warm. “What was that all about?”

Her own blood is boiling. “Do you really care?”

His eyes have gone dark and glassy, and his hair is dotted with snowflakes.

“No,” he says, breathless enough to draw a laugh out of her. “God, no.”

She tugs at him, and their leisurely stroll is now a brisk stride, and then she breaks -- her laughter setting the pace as they jog across the street towards the tower.

_~*~_

_Little rivers of anticipation ran down my inseam_

_As I kicked those five-hundred Italian horses into life_

_And left reality behind me_

_\-- **Thomas Dolby**_

~*~

The light in Natasha’s suite is set to ambient, the room chilly, but he’s burning, feverish with want. She sheds her coat as he loosens his tie, each stripping off the trappings of civility with surgical precision. Her cheeks are cold when he frames her face, her frigid hands pulling his shirt from his pants. 

She tastes of champagne and snow, and for all that he’d been distracted all night by her body bound in promise to him, he wants to relish this kiss -- her cheekbones under his thumbs, the brush of her hair, her hands stroking his back, and the curve of her body as she seeks warmth, relief.

He tugs at the knot at her waist, and she whimpers a breathy, “Please.”

It’s powerful, but it’s theater. And suddenly, he’s full up of theater. 

He presses into the kisses, hands on the knot and she lets him walk her to the wall. But it’s still a game, a rebellious tease, and he doesn’t know what he wants any more, but knows he’ll take brutal honesty and ending the night hard and wanting over a performance. 

He breaks the kiss to murmur against her ear, “Turn around.”

She does, bracing her forehead on her arm, back arched. He steps up close behind her, tracing the skin at her nape, the line of her zipper, and then reaches down to slide his hands along her thighs, ruching up the dress. It slides against the silky undergarments, and when the bare strip of upper thigh is exposed, he rests his thumbs along the hem of stocking.

The sound she makes is half surprise, half startle. And it’s honest, enough so that he leans down, mouth against her skin. He pushes the fabric on her left side up, the lush curve of her ass on display, teeth against flesh, and she bucks against him. He slides his forearm between her legs, cradling her in the crook of his elbow, and suckles, bites, relishes this perfect, succulent feast.

She reaches behind herself, hands fisting into his hair, pulling so hard his eyes water, and it is so...fucking...satisfying.

He breaks the suction with a pop, with a huff of throbbing want that’s almost a chuckle, and leans into the vicious pull of her hands. He lays his cheek against her cheek, the wet spot of heat he’d suckled to the surface, the damp heat of her along his forearm, his fingers curling around the daisy chain of rope along her belly. The loose ends peek from under her rouched skirt, begging to be unraveled.

Not yet. Bruce shakes his head free from her hands.

He tucks the draping fabric of her dress into the circle of doubled rope around the back of her waist, framing her ass, and crouches lower to unzip her calf length boots. She steps out of them, arms braced on the wall again. Imminently fuckable. Waiting. Pliant.

“It's a pretty picture,” he says, almost dismissive, digging at her a little, “but is it art?”

She drops her arms and turns, “Well, what _do_ you want?” Her cheeks are blazing, her nipples points through the dress.

He wants this, the truth of her like a roaring fire. “You tell me.” 

“Tell you what you want.” Her eyebrows are sketches of incredulity as she glances between his face and his erection.

“Tell me what you _think_ I want.”

“In colorful detail?”

“As meta as you like.”

“Ah,” Natasha reaches behind herself and unzips the dress, undoes the halter bra. In stockings and rope and sopping wet panties she stalks a slow circle around him and contemplates aloud.

“I think you want to fuck me, but you think that's too easy, or maybe too trite. Anticlimactic, perhaps.”

“Hardly.”

“Puns are the last refuge of the desperate, Bruce.” She's behind him now, tracing a finger across his shoulders as she passes. “I think you're concerned I'm gaming you, that any show of soft underbelly is suspect. It's not just that I asked for this, I think you want to know _why_.”

When she comes back around there's a foil square tucked under the rope. “Did you just pick my pocket?”

She shrugs, then her eyes dart away, brow furrowed, “It's a demonstration of faith. The rope. That I trust you with my body--not that I can keep myself safe with you, but that I don't have to.” She meets his eyes and there’s so much there, inexpressible but wide open, “I wanted to show you that.”

“Faith,” he breathes, caught out.

“Yeah, Bruce.” She wraps her own fist around the rope up her belly, framed above by the condom and below by the swell of her lips. “I'm even gonna let you choose if I come tonight or not, but I'm gamma’ing out of this harness right now.”

He reaches around to the small of her back and tugs the anchor knot free. 

The groan she gives takes him down on his knees, pulling rope loose and tossing it aside. He runs his tongue along the red marks it's left on her skin, and she grips his shoulder and neck. He peels the abused panties off, rubbing his face in the crease of her thigh.

“Would you really let me do that?” He lays his tongue where the little teasing knot had been, burning hot and making her hiss. He mumbles slow against her, dragging his bottom lip against her clit, “do you want me to leave you hanging?”

“Speak now,” she twitches away from him with a breathless chuckle, “or you won't have a choice.”

“If you want, we'll do that sometime.” Bruce sits back on his heels and looks up at her, letting loose all the things he’s been thinking about for hours. “We can tie you up and make you crazy for hours, stop and go to dinner while you squirm, come back and tease you until you want to kill me. But I've been wanting to see you come all night. Wanting to feel you. I want to bend you over my bed and bury myself in you and feel you come around me…”

Natasha stiffens, locking her knees and pitching forward.

He rises up and catches her, a spike of adrenaline turning into hot delight when he realizes her twitching is release. He pets her sweaty hair back and croons as she lets out a ragged giggle laced wih profanity.

Bruce resolves to work on the dirty talk, as a thing.

Panting, she takes some of her own weight back, hiccuping and moving to curl into a big stuffed chair, and he realizes there’s been a steady chime from the interface panel by the door.

“Enable voice interface,” she says to the room.

JARVIS speaks rapidly, sounding apologetic, “Captain Rogers is calling assembly, wheels up in fourteen minutes. There have been confirmed reports of an amphibious hybrid creature, rampaging through a waterpark in Orlando. Local authorities are ill-equipped to wrangle the entity--”

“Push notifications to my phone; voice interface off.”

“Damned bat signal.” Bruce should be doing something other than standing there rock hard drinking in the sight of her twitching, eyes glazed. He shifts his erection, squeezing it a little against the ache.

“Give me a second,” she breathes, “I need to pack.”

Bruce snags her gear bag off a side table and heads to the modular shelving unit of black fabric bins which are unlabeled but neatly organized; climbing and spelunking equipment, computer components, costume jewelry, gun cleaning kit.

“Next row down, far left,” she says, “bite insulators and the neoprene gloves.”

He locates and shoves them in the bag, pulling out the next storage box in that row. “Is this bin entirely makeup? Nevermind, that makes perfect sense.” He roots in the next, and holds up a box of electrified shuriken, “How about this?”

“Won’t need those,” she rises up on her braced hands and pauses to shudder. He leans over to run his hand up her spine and savor the shake in her voice when she says, “Make sure my rappel kit’s still in the bag.”

“You realize you really are Batman, right?"


	7. Bootleg Sessions

### CH7 - Bootleg Sessions

_~*~_

_Mystery achievement_

_Don't breathe down my neck no_

_I got no trophies on display_

_I sign them away_

_I mean what the heck_

_\-- **The Pretenders**_

**__** _~*~_

This time it's a salamander, and it has human backup.

Dressed in polos and chinos, at first they come off as oblivious waterpark staff, innocent bystanders who happen to be really good at being in the way. Then Clint spots one of them crouched behind bushes, pulling a drone control pad from under a trashcan, and the fun of sorting hostiles from unlucky citizens begins.

This is Natasha’s forte, so she spends the next two hours tearing through the park identifying and putting them down with varying levels of permanence. Clint focuses on taking out the drones, which luckily aren’t robust enough to shoot live ammo, but are a bombardment hazard when they dive from above.

The Captain and Thor deal with the army of gilled amphibians hatching and swarming out of an artificial lagoon at the back end of the park, while Stark hunts down the handful that have made a break for freedom into the natural lagoon beyond.

Bruce coordinates with the Fish and Wildlife folks, relaying requests to Clint to tag with trackers a couple animals in the swarm headed northwest, putting out the call for cat carriers to wrangle live specimens, and letting the team know where to look for additional egg clutches. His voice is a soothing punctuation in Natasha’s ear.

Then the main pool erupts like Tokyo Bay.

Half a million gallons of water part into tiny tsunamis to reveal the Mudpuppy Thing. The inundation literally turns the tide of battle for several long minutes, Steve’s shield swept away until Tony locates it blocking an intake port of the kiddie fountain pool. Clint climbs atop a tiki bar to get visuals, bitching all the way. Natasha mutters, “God damn you, Bernice,” hoping this is the last of the monster bombs she’s sent out into the world to bite the ass of Akesotech’s shady customer base.

The Mudpuppy Thing is the size of a car hauler, and takes gunfire like it’s being gently misted with a spray bottle.

It doesn't go after people, but it's tearing the hell out of the park rides, hurling steel and debris, and that kind of collateral damage kills.

Natasha makes the call, “Dr. Banner, I think we’re gonna need a Code Green.”

“Respectfully, Widow,” Bruce begins testily--but he’s cut off by his own roar of, “HULK GOT THIS!”

She smiles and whips around to deflect a pipe wrench poorly aimed toward her head. On the plus side, these clowns were expecting to herd a compliant swarm, and were unprepared for the colossal cryptid lurking under the wave pool.

The Mudpuppy Thing fights tenaciously, going to ground in the support structure of the gigantic waterslide, wedged in and through the steel girders. Hulk is unable to get a grip, frustrated by the layer of slime on its skin.

Grumbling, he rips out a light pole to use as a giant escargot fork.

Hulk skewers and levers the Mudpuppy Thing, girders groaning and pinging. Losing ground, it jams its tail into the pump house, and when Hulk jabs again the metal pole completes the circuit and electricity flows.

The roaring and thumping are earthquake level. The sky flashes hellish white with actinic discharge, the comms cutting out to filter the EM static. The guy Natasha's fighting goes limp, babbling surrender.

Steve barks into the comms for the authorities to cut the power, sending the park into darkness, but preventing further electrocutions. “Roll call!”

Hulk bellows with unhinged fury at the center of pulpy ripping sounds, as the team reports and helicopters circle, their searchlights illuminating the now eldritch horror of the waterpark. 

Tony flies over the carnage in the main pool, commenting, “Wow, that’s terrific bass.”

Clint snorts, and then hastily reassures the Captain that it's an old joke, there are no more fish monsters to worry about, just cleaning up the swarm of cat-sized amphibians. “Though it is Florida, so I’m still keeping an eye out for mermaids, skunk apes, and man-eating pythons.”

The Mudpuppy Thing has been crossed off the list of cryptids, however. Severed red fronds of gills the size of small palm trees slosh in the muck, overflowing bloody water onto the walkways and flower beds. A splat of what might be liver knocks Tony sideways in the sky. A massive fist pounds into the slush, looking for purchase and possibly something else to throw.

“Romanoff,” Tony says, with a grunt of disgust, “maybe it’s your turn now.”

Steve’s voice is staticy when he replies, something knocked askew in his comms. “We’re still fending off some stragglers. Oof--

A palm tree comes out by the roots and slams into one of the waterpark jeeps, stopping it dead.

“So maybe hold off a bit,” Tony corrects.

The door flings open and Natasha tackles and zipties the driver. She hands him off to the uniformed officer who took custody of the previous lackey.

It takes a few minutes more to secure the scene, and then Steve's debriefing with the local authorities and Natasha heads toward Hulk.

The tantrum has wound down, and he now sits on the end of the seven lane water slide, his feet dangling in the pool. The emergency sodium light sheens gold across his green shoulders. He’s calm enough to come back on his own, but instead he’s watching her approach.

She’s promised to be there for the whole comedown, but that’s between her and Bruce. Natasha wonders if Hulk has a demand of his own for her.

She stoops to rinse the worst of the blood from her gloves, which in her case is definitely not mudpuppy. It would be better to get him away from the pool before he plops into the deep end as disoriented Bruce, but her options for it aren’t great without riling the Other Guy back up. She crouches near the shallows, where the bottom slopes sharply toward the huge slide.

“Hey there…”

It should be unnerving, the acid green of those eyes in the weird light, but they’re framed in such a Bruce expression of fond crankiness it only reminds her of the gym. He’s flashed those eyes at her a few times during practice, or perhaps Hulk has.

She sits down cross legged in four inches of water, methodically tugs off her soaked gloves, and hooks them into her belt.

Hulk slips off the end of the slide, sending a bow wave of watery gore that breaks into her lap and splashes her chest. The things she puts up with. Natasha reaches out an arm, palm out and open. She does not dwell on how the water is thick from his kill, because her own hands are scraped and sticky from hers.

He’s reluctant, almost skittish as he wades toward her, and lets out a grumbling sound that resolves into words, “Hulk protect. Not just puny Banner.”

“We protect everyone who’s puny,” she reassures, “everyone who needs help.”

He holds out a massive fist, still clenched tight. “ _We_ help.” There’s a distinction, a point he’s trying to make before he opens his fingers for her touch.

Everything’s a koan with this guy...but Natasha is equipped to divine shades of meaning from his expressions alone, having studied the unspoken monologue on Bruce’s face for a while now. “We’re a team.”

He thumps his chest. “Not just puny Banner.”

“Ah,” she rolls up to one knee, leaning toward him as earnest as she can be, “You’ve been on our team since the beginning.”

He humphs, turns and opens his hand, and lets her stroke into the center of his palm. “We help.”

“We will.” It feels like she’s made a pact just now, but Natasha finds she doesn’t mind it. Beholden to Bruce to bring him back, but advocating for Hulk to have a chance to be out in the world as well, to have the chance to make his own positive difference.

Hulk humphs, pleased that he’s made his point, and wades closer.

As he comes up from the depths Bruce begins to assert himself. She springs forward to catch his head, though he’s still too big for her to soften his landing very much.

Natasha curls herself around him like a crash helmet, winding her limbs around his chest as he becomes lighter and compact, as his body spasms and folds down into human scale. She can feel his muscles tightening smaller, she can _hear_ his bones cracking and dwindling.

Bruce pants and his fingers clutch at the air and he’s burning hot, and it’s this last bit where his human voice cries out, no matter which direction he’s going in, this is the part where he’s Bruce enough to experience himself changing and that seems to be when the pain is hardest to bear.

But that isn’t quite right, is it? She’s seen him bear pain, witnessed how he rises up and through it, beautiful in his will to remain as it washes through him. Affected, yes, but unchanged. The pain here is magnitudes more than she’s wrung out of him, but it’s not the sole reason he cries out.

She smooths his wet hair from his face, croons his name softly, knowing that she’s digging into his vulnerable form with all the hard bits of her uniform and boots but reluctant to slacken her hold until he relaxes against her, opens his eyes to her.

“Hey there,” Bruce croaks. He raises a trembling hand to touch her cheek, “Is the monster movie over?”

“Mission accomplished.”

His eyes close with relief, and she knows right then that it’s not pain that makes him cry out during the transformation, it’s fear. Fear of going out of his own head. Fear of what he will do. Fear of what he’s coming back to. In this case, he’s coming back to what looks like carnage.

He sits up, and takes in the situation with dawning horror, “Oh, this is not--”

“Not as bad as it looks.” Natasha hustles him to his feet, slippery and reeking of swamp and blood. Unlike the other few times she’s been through this with him, his shakiness is worsening instead of abating. She gathers a fistful of his stretched out waistband, lays his arm across her shoulders.

“You’re implying something else did this? Ripped the poor creature limb from limb?”

Natasha steers him out of the pool, past the park vehicle that’s still idling with a palm tree staving in the passenger side roof so deep the rear axle is broken. “Everyone put in a team effort to contain and eliminate the threat.”

“There were drones, and _people--_ ”

“People are my purview.”

He halts and drops to his hands and knees, nearly taking her down with him, and retches. Nothing comes up but a little bile, which is nothing compared to the mudpuppy effluvia still dripping from them both. “I remember pulling it apart.”

She shoves down the image of blinding white plasma arcing around the Hulk and shrugs, “It fought dirty.”

“No, you don’t understand, I tried not to and I couldn’t...” he sits back on his heels, staring up at the circling choppers. “It was unnecessary."

“You can’t be certain of that,” she pulls him back to his feet, heading toward the bright knot of emergency vehicles by the gates.

“It was cruel--”

“That thing needed to be stopped. Like the people who made it, and who made the swarm they tried to let loose into the wetlands. Those people were also stopped, and not because I asked nicely.”

“Nat...tearing it apart, it felt good.”

The shame in that whisper makes her feet falter, but she keeps walking him the last few meters to the ambulances. She says brusquely, “Of course it did.”

She circumvents any resistance on his part by handing him directly off to a pair of EMTs otherwise unoccupied. “Low blood sugar, fatigue, possible dehydration,” she rattles off, unzipping an inside pocket and pulling out a spare comm, “no transport off site, no needles--he gets peevish.”

“He’s also perfectly capable of getting his own orange juice and mylar blanket.” Bruce steps aside to sit on the nearest bench instead of the running board of the ambulance, but he does let the team take vitals.

She gives him the comm, gratified when he automatically shoves it into his ear. “I’ll be back in a few.”

Natasha gives the Captain their status and is sent to the field decontamination station set up in the parking lot. She goes into a shower cubicle set up next to a water truck, screened off with blue plastic tarps hastily taped together.

The sticky ichor has seeped into the seams of her tactical suit, mixing with the pool water and the sweat that was far more than the lining fabric could wick away. She peels and tugs it off, feeling like a snake scraping off her own skin. The harsh hospital soap lathers orange, and the water that collects near her feet, into a hose and another tank truck for safety, looks like the runoff from a knackers yard.

She hears Bruce going into decon as she’s pulling on sweats and a t-shirt with the waterpark logo, jamming her bare feet back into her clean but dripping boots. Thor, hair wet and armor spotless again, offers an open box of Krispy Kremes. He looks like he’s got another half dozen in his mouth, so she doesn’t ask him when he had time for a donut run.

Steve pulls her aside to join the debrief at the station, which he’s perfectly capable of completing alone, or with Thor or Stark if extra charm is needed. She suspects he’s trying to rehabilitate her public image a little, so they tag team the locals. It’s not that she thinks it will make a difference, but she’s not going to thwart Rogers developing some political instincts.

They wrap up after two in the morning, and that’s when she finds out that half the team is already back in New York.

Steve sprawls across most of the rear of the squad car, and Natasha curls against the door. He scrolls through texts while the uniformed officer drives them back to the waterpark hotel. “Clint’s crashing in a luxury suite until he’s rested enough to take us back in the quinjet. Tony and Thor flew home solo right after we called the operation. Bruce took a commercial flight around midnight.”

Natasha ignores the hot feeling in her chest at that, and offers calmly, “If you’re up for it, I can take us back, you can sleep in your own bed in a few hours.”

Steve looks at her for a full block, flashes of street lamps highlighting the straight sweep of his lashes. “Don’t much care where I sleep, but if you can roust Clint for the keys, we can leave sooner.”

Natasha faces forward, “There aren’t keys, Rogers, it’s not some scooter.”

A quinjet isn't a scooter, but once she's in the air at cruising altitude, Clint and Steve sacked out in their five point harness and their trust in her skill, there's not much keeping her from brooding all the way to New York.

She's been learning to tell Bruce what she wants, not because he's requested, and certainly not because he's clueless. For a genius, and a white male one to boot, he's surprisingly good at listening, at reading people and sniffing out obscured motives. Natasha understands how deeply rooted that kind of survivor skill is, that it's an autonomous reflex he learned the hard way to stop ignoring.

She's aware that he will probably never drop that vigilance around her, though it's a goal she's decided to pursue nonetheless. What's life without challenge, after all?

While it fits with her aim, the first reason Natasha's being as direct and open with him as she can force herself to be, is that the exposure itself feels fair.

Bruce is a stripped sparking wire, always vulnerable, always at risk of his id rampaging out in the world no matter how tightly he pulls himself in. He doesn't have any choice but to come clean, to shout his truth loud enough to be heard over the roar, to ask for what he needs, blatantly, if only as a warning.

She feels the desire to reciprocate, to be as naked for him as he is for her.

Natasha struggles with this, of course she does, against a lifetime of viciously subjugating the vulnerability of any real want. She has to pry her own lips open to speak, has to bite back the automatically filtered and couched wording, strip it down to something artlessly, painfully direct...and then say it.

Then he pulls this shit.

Humans are indeed the most dangerous game.

~*~

_We made mad love_

_Shadow love_

_Random love_

_And abandoned love_

_Accidentally like a martyr_

\-- **Warren Zevon**

~*~

Bruce wakes up to the stench of burnt eggs and the scrape and thunk of a pan emptied into the trash. It’s not even eight, thin cold light coming into his living room when he shuffles out.

Natasha is barefoot in his kitchen, a harried vision in sweats and a pale lime t-shirt that proclaims _Wettest Thrill Rides!_ over a flying manta ray. He watches her crack a couple more shells, pull out a clean fork, drop a chunk of butter in the pan, and beat the hell out of the eggs.

“This is surprisingly domestic.”

“Who said these were for you?” She pours the egg in and drops the flame sputteringly low. It’ll take forever for them to scramble, but maybe this batch won’t burn.

“I assumed, since you invited yourself into my kitchen.”

“Now I need an invitation, then? What happened to ‘stay with me after I come back’?” She stirs the pan. “I go off to decon/debrief and the next thing I know you’ve fled across state lines.”

Bruce is irritated, but that’s fine. He fills his electric kettle and pulls out two mugs. He can share, even if she won’t. “I was done, I went home.”

“To lick your wounds in private.”

“I asked you to be there when I come back, not be a babysitter.”

“Then stop being a baby.”

He lays his hands flat on the counter, spreading his fingers so each knuckle makes firm contact. “I didn't exactly lose control last night… But I didn't exactly relinquish it either.”

“That thing rose up and the last words before your comm fell out were, ‘ _Hulk got this_ ,’. You made a call right in the moment. You, him, the both of you. It's too late to dither now, and frankly, it was the right call any--”

“You can’t deny that was horrific, Natasha. That there’s a big line between putting down a threat and mutilating a creature that didn’t ask to be created in the first place.”

“We do this work because we _can_ , because it’s in our power to step in and protect the public from those who want to do innocent people harm, create chaos, seize power through terror.”

His fingers curl tight around the mug.

Natasha zeroes in on that and levels the spatula at him like a threat. “Beating yourself up over what you can do will not protect you from bad decisions, any more than enjoying it makes you a force of destruction.”

“That’s bullshit,” he says, suddenly self-conscious of the thin sleep pants, the thin layer of protection between himself and the beast right now. Of that weird flare of pleasure that springs up at the sight of her in a hideous t-shirt, arguing about practicality and heroics as she's about to burn his last two eggs on his stove.

She scrapes them onto a plate, chopped to hell and brown at the edges, dumping hot sauce in a puddle to the side. She has not offered any reply to his call of bullshit, as if it doesn’t even merit a response.

“Is this the part where I’m supposed to think about what I’ve done?”

Natasha shovels the eggs into her mouth, and he wonders, belatedly, if she came straight from the quinjet pad. Her boots are lined up by his front door. “This isn’t about punishment, Bruce. Or penance. That’s the whole point.”

He pours the hot water into the teapot.

“I don’t take what I do lightly.” She sets the dirty dish in his sink, and leans against the counter more heavily than she normally would. “I used to. I was trained that my survival and my mission were the only stakes. That was never true. What is true is that because I’ve been a threat, there are very few threats that can get by me. I choose my missions. I live with the consequences, good and bad. And this morning, good people are still alive because of us.”

Bruce has known this from the moment he dusted himself off, borrowed an old pair of work pants, and headed back to Manhattan. The good he can do, the damage he can do.

Natasha slips an arm around his waist from behind and lays her head briefly on his shoulder blade. “I’m gonna crash in your bed since it’s closer. Wake me if there’s assembly.” She pads off down his hall without another word.

~*~

“Oh hey, he’s alive,” Clint ladles waffle batter into an iron shaped like Steve’s shield and closes the lid. He has an array of them in different shapes lined up on the counter.

“You’re awfully chipper,” Bruce opens the fridge, but nothing appeals. He slumps down at the table across from Thor, who nods respectfully, his cheeks squirreled out and another waffle in his hand ready to go. It’s fragrant with cinnamon and shaped like the imprint of a large fist.

“Slept on the flight.” Clint takes up another bowl and reloads a square iron. “Enough to make waffles.”

Thor sets a plate and fork in front of Bruce, sliding a moose-shaped bottle of syrup within reach. A steaming waffle scowls up at him with a pointy-eared hawk mask design, purple splotches indicating blueberries. “I suspect by your countenance that your own sleep was troubled? 

“Difficult morning?” Clint chuckles, the bastard.

Bruce stabs the fork into one of the waffle’s eyes.

“Genius notwithstanding, here’s something you might not know,” Clint reloads irons down the line, “and it’s fucking obvious too, because Stark does the same damn thing, just with tech, though Nat refuses to hear that they have this in common. Anyhoo…” he hands off a stack of multicolored waffles to Thor, “when Nat cares, you become a project.”

“It is her training,” Thor one-handedly folds a waffle like a dollar bill and bites it in half, adding, “and her avocation, just as Tony tunes engines and refines our weaponry.”

“She’s gonna pop the hood on your psyche and start tweaking--cognitive recalibration, she calls it. So be happy she’s using her powers for good. And her words.”

“I’m not hungry, actually,” Bruce shoves the plate back and rises, but Clint keeps talking, ostensibly to his array of irons.

“I’m turning snitch, the least you can do is listen.”

Thor unscrews the antlers from the moose and pours half a bottle of Vermont’s finest into a cereal bowl, giving Bruce an unnervingly cunning look. Cahoots. Jesus, they’re in cahoots.

“There’s a bare handful of people who have any history with her; it makes her antsy. It feels like a liability. So she turns the focus away from her, starts fiddling in your life, does her busybody shtick. Most people don’t see that it’s only going one way, they simply feel she’s invested and that she cares. Which she does, for the record, or she wouldn’t bother. Most people don’t get all prickly in return, which is why the two of you together are both hilarious and sad.”

Bruce bristles, “Speaking of busybodies.”

Thor folds a cherry pink Iron Man helmet waffle and dips it into his syrup bowl, rumbling, “I believe Clint means that while we have concerns as friends to you both, they are not serious concerns, and we wish to help if we may.”

“What he said,” Clint smirks. “Just be glad she’s trying to fix you, instead of fixing you up with half of SHIELD like she did Rogers.”

Thor clarifies for Bruce, “This was before SHIELD fell, of course.”

“And before he blundered into that whole Stark-Potts thing.”

“Hmm, yes,” Thor slurps his coffee, “I’m glad that’s finally working itself out.”

“So are her methods creepy? Yes. But that doesn’t mean--”

“I’m sorry,” Bruce raises a stopping hand and then circles it, “can we roll back there for a second? What’s the Stark-Potts thing?”

Thor and Clint give him equally puzzled looks, though Thor doesn’t stop chewing. Clint says, “You’re shitting me, right? Did Nat actually fuck your brains out?”

Unbidden, a hundred little details coalesce into a picture for Bruce, duly noted but until this moment unanalyzed. Comments and tensions, furtive looks and constrained tenderness. He thought he was being tag-teamed just now, he can’t imagine the combined forces of Tony and Pepper on poor Steve. He drops back into his chair, stating faintly, “How does that even work?”

“Love is not a conspiracy to be kept small,” Thor says, “especially when blunt talkers and women of action are involved.”

Clint adds more descriptively, “There’s been a fair amount of Lancelot angst and avoidance on Steve’s part, then something wild went down in the training room with Tony that only made it worse, but Pepper was up to meet us when we rolled in this morning at six. Steve went off with her to the penthouse like dead man walking, but she seemed really fucking amused.”

“Clinton my friend, would this be like the prose tales I’ve heard tell of, _Letters to Penthouse_?”

Clint tucks his chin into his chest, constipated with hysterical laughter he won’t let fly, and busies himself with his irons.

Bruce looks Thor straight in the eye and says, “I’d say so, yes.”

~*~

Natasha’s hair is a tangled riot on his pillows, her pants in a pile on the floor and the t-shirt twisted around her along with the blankets. She’s taking up most of the bed, arm tucked tight under her head and lower limbs sprawled.

Bruce gently nudges her to pull a leg in, and he sits up against the headboard with a biology journal. 

He’s moved on to his backlog of Current Anthropology focusing on global crises when she stirs, turning over to blink at him foggily. When he sees she isn’t going back to sleep, he clears his throat, and doesn't let himself stall.

“When I was about four or five,” he starts, feeling the keen focus hidden inside her silence, “my dad handed me a bowl of soup to take to the table. We were having guests, people from the school probably, and I was helping. The bowl was heavy, and hot, and I spilled it before I got more than five feet from the stove. I remember the fear right before it sloshed, and then the pain. I don’t remember crying. Maybe I didn’t.”

His eyes are directed at the journal, but he’s acutely aware of her snug in his bed, the way she listens like gathering intel. Fuck, in some ways, that's what this is. Intel given freely. He forces himself to continue.

“There’s a gap after that, just searing whiteness. I remember someone wrapping a bandage around my arm, in the hospital, asking me questions about school and my friends. My family. I could hear my mom, other side of the curtain, my father letting her do the talking. She had this cheerful voice she’d use, when she needed…” He blows out a breath. “When she needed to convince someone things were okay. Just the sound of her, I knew how to answer the questions.”

He folds the journal over his finger. This isn’t something he talks about: his childhood, his parents. And this one memory had seemed so normal to him for so long. A kid making a mistake. A trip to the ER. A lasting reminder but no real harm. “I had a scar, a patch like spackle. And I’d touch it, when I got angry, run my fingernail across it. When I’d get so angry I’d forget who I was and where I was and it would help me settle down, feeling the edges of where it was numb, the piece of me I couldn’t feel anymore because I was careless.”

It sounds even worse out loud. She nestles deeper into the pillow, as if this is a perfectly reasonable bedtime story.

“I learned a few other strategies. Although mostly, you know, they didn’t work. My self-awareness was...mediocre.”

Her fingers are gentle on his elbow until the nails scrape down his forearm, hard enough to draw up red lines and it sings through him. “It went away when the other guy showed up.”

He nods. “It’s ironic, right? And now everything, the transformation, the actions...they all exist in that white space, and it fades when I come back, but the damage remains.”

She digs her nails into his wrist and he wants to kiss her.

“I like it,” his voice is thick. “This,” he indicates the welts. “And this...seeing you in my bed, and I feel like...I don’t know what to do about that. Coping mechanisms...I can’t…”

There are sleep lines on her face, and her hair is mashed up in a ridiculous pouf, and she’s so damned beautiful, the acuity of those clear eyes. The deliberation in how she listens but doesn’t pull on the threads, and has refrained from using any of it against him.

“Bruce,” she reaches up and catches his shirt collar in her fist. “I need another hour of sleep, and I’d like you to get under the goddamned covers with me. When we get up, you’re going to make us lunch, and maybe paint my toenails because I think I’d like that. Then I’ll tie your hands behind your back, and go down on you until you sob. I might even let you come. How does that sit on your spectrum?”

He tucks a curl behind her ear, letting his fingers sink into her thick hair, cupping her skull.

“Close your eyes Natasha,” he says, unable to keep the affection from his voice. He savors her eye roll, the way she flips the covers back so he can slide in.

Hours later he dots silver polish on her toenails while she watches him squint through his lenses to stay in the lines, and he makes an early dinner while they dry. She does his dishes, and he doesn’t ask her if it’s one of those things she was trained not to let ride, he just stands next to her working the dishtowel.

Natasha pulls him back to bed after that.

All the ropes are in her suite, so she wraps the t-shirt around his wrists instead. It’s a token, just like the lines she grooves into his skin with her fingernails as she kisses him. Bruce hisses with each scratch, the flash of pain and the cold soothing tingle that follows. Outlining his skin for him.

She pushes him over a pile of pillows and works him open, maddening him with slow fingers, her body draped across his back so her hips rock against his. Embraced and fucked, a layer of sweat the only thing between them.

Bruce pulls his hands from the twist of shirt to reach back and grip her thigh, anchoring her even closer. He reaches the other down to stroke himself off as she hums, pleased, in his ear.


	8. Record Club Special Edition

### Record Club Special Edition

~*~

_Beautiful soul don't keep it in_

_Can you transform the pain you feel?_

_The birds of prey have swallowed_

_The breadcrumbs you left behind_

_To find your way back from the soul mines_

_\-- **Sananda Maitreya**_

~*~

Stark’s jiggling the edge of the console, uncharacteristically antsy. For all his motormouth tendencies, he’s not the twitchy sort--that’s Banner’s wheelhouse--but it’s the first lead they’ve had in months on anything close to the scepter.

“Radiation levels are _similar_ , not exact, which might be residual, or perhaps related tech,” Bruce says, scrubbing at his face.

“Even more reason to investigate,” Natasha says, “if this is tech that Hydra’s adding to the franchise.”

“Let's go in anyway,” Steve says, “see what the fuss is all about.”

Tony stops drumming, “Even without Thor?”

“I don’t think we can wait,” Steve sighs. “We’ve got NATO clearance to go in, they’ll provide backup and support, but they’re not thrilled about going on a potential wild goose chase in the glacial Alpine foothills. I don't want to let it sit until a bureaucrat gets cold feet.”

Bruce raises a shoulder, but Stark nods vigorously and Clint, laying on his back on the desk, just raises a hand like it’s homeroom, “Anyone else think this feels like a trap?”

~*~

Clint bellows over comms, “Definitely a trap, _fucking hell!_ ”

Bruce strains against the seat harness as the helicopter banks, listening to the radio chatter and trying to keep one eye on the tiny specks of his team on the rocky icefield the copter's moving away from. Stark’s on the other side of the ridge line taking fire. The mountainous glacial country is still hiding any number of HYDRA operatives even after most of the sniper emplacements had been picked off. 

Natasha rattles off coordinates, reporting that Barton’s gone down into a sinkhole in the snow. The helicopter crew exchanges terse looks and a few words, and they swing around again.

Bruce watches the tiny dots resolve into Steve jammed waist deep, wading out carefully like it’s quicksand, and Natasha flat on her belly, digging with his shield at the margin of a big divot in the snow. From the aerial perspective he can see building shapes under the now-cracked snowpack.

“Signs of an underground bunker, extensive, partially dug into the rock,” Bruce doesn’t like where they are, right on top of the hornet’s nest.

“Do you have visuals--is Barton buried or inside?” Natasha is breathless, still digging frantically. Steve has joined her, scooping like a badger, but the two of them can’t shift the tonnage of snow between Clint and fresh air, if he wasn’t lucky enough to fall right into the enemy’s lap instead.

“Bruce!”

He can hear the unnatural smoothness of her voice where she’s filed off the edge of panic, but that’s fine, he’s made the same calculations, and he's already pulled off his boots and clicked free of the harness.

“We’ve got a code situation here. You copy?”

“Copy, Widow.” He doffs his parka and hat and headset, meeting the wide eyes of the crew. They knew they were a particular brand of air support, but it can't be easy letting a guy out at five hundred feet wearing only baggy pants and his best reassuring smile. The door gunner crosses herself and gives him a thumbs up as he leans out to get his bearings on the battlefield below. Bog-standard humans have survived terminal velocity impacts into snow, but even rock won't be a problem; Bruce can feel the veins at his temples throb, feel his ribs spread as he inhales air so cold it smells like metal. He just needs to aim.

Steve’s squinting up at the helicopter. Natasha has turned away to dig, because she can’t not. Bruce lets go.

~*~

Hulk is a blunt instrument, but one Natasha is starting to hone and has learned to help direct. She points and he digs like an avalanche in reverse, throwing snow and boulders of crystalline blue ice. Then he punches down through snow and scrapes against metal, and pulls Clint out by his tac vest like yanking him back through time. Hulk gently shakes the snow from Clint, and lays him at arm’s length away from the pit in the ice field, like setting a stuffed animal on a bed.

He turns that wide feral grin on Natasha, pleased with himself--and the ground around him disappears, taking him with it. She rolls to the side, hearing rending metal and then gunfire as she sprints to Clint to drag him out of the way. It seems they’ve found the hidden base. Which Hulk is effectively destroying.

The ground buckles up under her--the concussion feels like a grenade, and she crouches to keep her feet, to keep pulling Clint toward safety. Hulk’s answering roar knocks her on her ass anyway, so she kicks instead, shoving them backward until she can stagger back up.

She feels for a pulse and Clint rouses, coughing out slush. She grabs his arms, and he grabs back and straightens as much as he can, helping her drag him toward the edge of the ice field.

“Widow!” Steve is in her comms but she can’t see him, everything is just a blur of white, a whir of terrible noise as Hulk rampages against resistance in the crevice below her. “Get out of there!”

“Need evac, Cap,” she says, and he joins her in sliding Clint’s shivering body across the churned snow, moving at a plodding crouching run.

The shaking rending stops. The quiet is so sudden the air seems clearer, snow falling back down in the absence of noise, a faint repulsor whine approaching.

Hulk bursts up from the hole he’d fallen in, coiled power, making her grin. He lopes toward the two of them sledding Clint to safety, reaching gently out, then flinching back at a clacking metallic sound that echoes weirdly off the ice and rock.

Rods pop up in a perimeter around them, all aimed at Hulk.

“Go!” she yells to Hulk, throwing her body over Clint, “Go, go, goddamn it go!”

The next bit is a blur. Steve charges across the snowpack like a rampaging moose, scruffs them, and drags them both away. The rods fire with muted thumps and a strange whistling, and Hulk roars in response. Stark lands and ferries Clint back up to a waiting helicopter, possibly the same one Bruce had dropped out of. Through it all, Hulk keeps bellowing, and it’s not the sound of challenge or effort or fury, it’s not anything close to words, and it makes the skin up Natasha’s spine crawl.

At the edge of the ice field she finally gets a good look. Hulk’s breath puffs out in wet, thick, animal bursts, crystals forming in his hair and under his nose as he stomps, kicking the arc of weaponry into a gruel of busted metal and snow. They’ve served their purpose, however, having launched thick cables to wind around Hulk, tangled with weighted ends like bolas, binding his arms to his torso.

Out of hard targets, Hulk strains against the cables, which ping like steel guitar strings and fray.

“No, nonono _nono_ \--”

“Iron Man, report!” Cap barks.

“It’s one of Howard’s old projects--Hulk can break the nylon without breaking a sweat, but this is laced with vibranium alloy wires, far stronger than bridge cables,” Stark pauses to listen to JARVIS, adding, “new and improved with microscale hook and loop tech--because the space program just keeps on giving--so it’s gonna keep winding tighter the more he fights it.”

Natasha is breathing ice, fingers and toes frozen and her face burning with cold, her eyes sore even behind the goggles. She’s been out too long, but she can’t leave him. She tries very hard not to twitch as the fibers split. Hulk feels them give and struggles harder, but the thin twists of wire bite into his flesh. He has nothing left to distract him from his livid fury at the bonds, at the indignity, maybe even at her standing there in the snow witnessing him.

He takes a couple lumbering steps toward her, bends at the waist to bring his head down to her level, and lets out his whole lungful of air in a roar that sounds like a plane scraping along a runway without landing gear.

Natasha stands her ground, grateful for the snow goggles and balaclava which hide her involuntary wince. “Are you done freaking out?”

Hulk straightens by leaping directly upward and coming down hard on his heels, shaking and cracking even more ice, then stomping off in a tight circle.

She’s yanked up in the air by Stark, and they regroup in a military transport truck at the foot of the glacier. Steve wraps her in a forced air warming blanket, but after a cursory check she’s able to wave away anything more intrusive. Clint’s at the center of a knot of medical personnel, getting the full ride, warmed IV and all. Half of his face is reddish purple with incipient bruising, and the look he gives her is sour envy, “I can’t believe I get needles and you get tucked in with cocoa.”

“If you weren’t such a disaster magnet.” Natasha winces as her ears get enough blood circulating to feel like they’re being seared on a grill. “Besides, I have to head back out.”

“Maybe he’ll burn himself out,” Tony says, over Steve’s growl of protest.

“That’s a last resort, and you know it.” Natasha trades her soaked gloves and balaclava for dry, which are unfortunately NATO winter camo and scream military. 

“Yeah, that doesn’t sound like the stubborn bastard we know and love.” Tony holds his helmet so they can all peer at the tiny screen displaying video from a camera drone he’d left hovering over the ice field. Tony is her backup for good reason, he also knows Bruce’s twitches and feints, Hulk’s impulsive habits. “So let's admit that’s not going to happen anytime soon.”

She zips her parka back on and nods to Stark, who whisks her off. The wind bites harder now that her skin has been reminded of warmth, but she trained in bitter cold as a child, maneuvers in the dead woods of January.

Hulk’s fists clench and release, forearms writhing as he tries to break the ligatures on his upper arms but only ratchets them tighter. Blood seeps and crusts on the cables, dripping oxblood red and startlingly human. Stripes of blood on snow are familiar, nostalgic like a holiday card, except now she’s older and she lets herself feel the ache of empathy.

“If he’d let Banner come back, the cables would slip off.” Stark is breathless with frustration and impotent worry.

“I don’t think he knows how to let go,” Natasha says. “He’s scared.”

“Yeah, well, so’m I,” Stark says, “If he’d let me, I’ve got something that could cut through them eventually.”

“You wanna ask him?”

The answering snort makes her feel a little better, counters the sick feeling of seeing Bruce and Hulk trapped in these engineered bindings, struggling, losing bits of themselves with every minute.

Hulk’s pectoral muscles flex, the goosebumps like river stones, and another section gives down to the metal. It cuts into his flesh and he howls, an abused elephant sound. She can’t do any of the lullaby routines--those rely on agreement between the three of them. Sleep, not death. He has to be a willing participant, has to be able to reach for her if only in spirit.

“Fuck it,” Natasha mutters. There’s still something she can do. With Bruce, it always comes down to skin and honesty. Hulk is a different entity, but they share some wiring. “Stark, cover me.”

She pushes up her balaclava and goggles, strips off her parka and her gloves, dropping them in the snow along with her guns. The cold hits her like a brick wall, like cinders ground into her skin. With clunky freezing fingers she pulls the zip down on her suit to expose her throat.

Hulk sneers and clenches his fists, but he doesn’t kick or bellow at her. She comes close enough that he could swing from the elbow, could still easily break her bones.

“Hey big guy,” she says, struggling to sound calm as her jaw locks against chattering. “I know you’re mad. You’re worried. This is some bullshit Banner’s got you caught up in.”

He stomps and growls, but the head tilt indicates he’s listening. Natasha fights a racking shiver that’s part frigid air, part flop sweat turning to icicles in her pits, under her breasts. She keeps stepping toward him as if he couldn’t smash her like an ant.

In other circumstances her swagger would be genuine--she and the Big Guy are building an understanding--but there’s madness driving him now, desperation and rage. The thing that scares her most is that it’s a look she recognizes from Bruce. When he gets like this, there’s no reasoning with him.

Hulk strains against the cables, vibrating, but he’s not moving toward her and he’s not moving back. She gets as close as she dares, close enough to smell she’s not the only one dripping acrid fear sweat. He flexes his arm and whines in pain. She can see the flesh trying to push the vibranium out like a sliver, knitting over the sections that are burrowed deep.

“Stop it!” The words erupt out of her. He’s constantly re-cutting himself as he struggles, and it feels like a blade in her own flesh.

He pauses in surprise.

She's still shouting, “Hold still and let me help you!”

Like Clint snapping at a kid about to run into danger. Like Clint, she closes her eyes for a moment and tells herself that being a prick won’t solve this.

Stark mutters in her ear, “...steady, steady, steady...steady, steady....”

“Please,” She unsnaps her tool belt and drops it in the snow, then pulls the zip all the way down so she can wriggle out of the top of her tac suit. The wind cuts right through the thermals, gooseflesh like pebbles, and she braces tight against shivers. She’s only got a few minutes to convince him to give her a chance. Usually it’s her open palm, a connection of bare hand and wrist, but they don’t have time for delicate niceties, and so she’s as open to him as possible without bringing his own pinioned arms into it.

He sniffs the air, eyebrow going up like she’s speaking a new language. She smells bad, reeking of gunfire and hours of fighting sweat and adrenaline gone sour.

“Let me up,” she gestures up his body. “I’ll show you how to get free.”

The radium green of his eyes darkens, but slowly, very very slowly, he squats so she can grab his thumb for leverage, step on his knee like a running board.

His body is blessedly warm. Her back aches from tensing against the cold, but the heat radiating from him is enough to ease that clench and let her breathe better. She stands on his crouched thigh, eye level with him. She can smell the blood dripping down his arms, meaty and human, and she looks forward to the hissyfit Bruce is going to throw about gamma exposure later.

“I don’t suppose you’d let Tony slice through these with a torch?”

He whips around to look at Stark hovering in the suit, nearly knocking her back into the snow, his growl rumbling in her body like a motorcycle engine, if the motorcycle were the size of a tank.

“Okay,” she says, “my way.”

She runs her hand along the cable. It’s twisted and tight, and she can’t unknot it, but she doesn’t need to. She only needs to reassure him enough so he’ll accept the lullaby, let Bruce come back to make the situation better.

Hulk startles her by saying, “Hurts.”

He rarely offers up information, but it’s clear he’s modulating his voice softer to address her. She’s so close she can see the gold and olive flecks in his eyes, see that they are markedly bigger than Bruce’s despite looking small compared to the rest of him.

“Hurts,” he says again, “Fix!”

“I know,” she soothes, “and I’m sorry. You don’t deserve this.”

“Banner likes this,” he says, an accusing whine. “Stupid Banner.”

“Not like this.” She reaches down to lay her hand over his heart, fingers curled into the fraying rope fibers. “He doesn’t like being trapped either.” She runs her hand over his massive chest, fingers skimming along the hollow between his lats and his collarbones like navigating a canyon. The human heart is the size of both fists, and Hulk's thumps like a kettledrum. She feels fear and anger course through him, but he’s letting her touch. He’s not shaking her off.

“Help,” he says again, a whining, desperate order, but his breathing is steadying.

“I will, there’s no danger here anymore.” She follows the path of the cables with her hands, murmuring to him, feeling the drag of the microhooks snagging at her own flesh. “We did a good job, we didn’t have to worry about any civilians, you got to Clint in time, he’s probably drinking all the cocoa while we play in the snow…” Most of her is warm enough in the radiant heat, though her hands throb and her windward ear feels suspiciously toasty.

“Don’t like hurt!” He tenses again, and she bites her numb cheek not to swear in frustration. “Red hurts Banner, sometimes.”

“Only when he lets me.” There might be worse circumstances to have this conversation in, but Natasha can’t think of them. “It’s not to cause him harm.”

He raises a heavy brow, and it’s so Bruce that she wants to choke on it. “Banner doesn’t scream, doesn’t look for Hulk. Looks for Red.”

“He puts himself in my hands, to make him feel good.” She wonders if it makes any sense to him -- the pain or the pleasure, or if it’s all just the confusing, confounding morass of _Bruce_. “Like when you get so angry, the only thing to do is smash, right? Does it tickle when you do that, or is it better than that? The pressure, the impact, that’s a strong good feeling, isn’t it?”

“Feels good,” he reluctant. “But HULK _hurts now_. Hulk HATES this.” He flexes again, and she digs her fingers into his biceps, working to get under the cables in a spot that isn’t already bleeding. He shakes like a wet dog.

“I know! This isn’t anything you want, I get it,” she leans her weight against his chest, bringing her face so close she can only look into his eyes one by one, “I can help you get out, but _you_ need to give me a chance.”

He stops struggling, brow knitting in thought and bottom lip jutting in displeasure, but he comes to a decision. “Safe.”

She nods. And then the real question. “Will you...trust me?” 

“Red is strong, fights when Hulk fights. Tough cookie."

“Beats crumbling,” she says.

"Smart cookie. Lets Hulk do his job when Banner won’t. Banner weak.”

She knows Banner is stronger than Hulk, exactly because he knows how and when not to fight, how to apply his brilliance and bravery to find another way through, but she knows her audience. “We're a team.”

“We’re team.”

She lets her mouth curl up, “So you'll try?”

Hulk’s, “Yeah,” comes out with a long sigh, a thick cloud of steam hanging in the air as he tucks his chin down and reaches for calm. Another Bruce gesture, when he’s chiding himself against being mean, and she wouldn’t have expected that to translate. She watches the stillness that she’s been waiting for flow into him, the acid green of his eyes darkening to burnished gold, to olive, like the sun setting on an alien land.

“Sun’s getting low,” she says. He huffs and sighs and lets go...and slips free of the bonds as he shrinks.

~*~

Bruce stares at the bent and frayed coils of cable in front of him, nestled in a spare NATO cargo bag. He can smell the bleach solution it had been doused with, the stiff bloodstains on the nylon cordage sienna brown from oxidation. He’s watched the footage of the mission and the aftermath, read Stark’s notes on the decontamination procedures he’d used and Natasha’s preliminary rundown of the intelligence and materiel they’d been able to salvage from the trampled base. What hadn’t been sabotaged by HYDRA, blasted by Tony, or collaterally damaged by the Hulk.

It’s late, and Natasha is holed up with Maria and Clint and a hard drive they’d found tucked into the pocket of one of the dead scientists. Evidence the scepter was being used for human experimentation, Maria had said, offering that fact to Bruce like a stinging balm on a wound.

This month alone he’s woken to fingernails caked with the gore of a mutated creature he’d ripped apart, and come to grimed head to foot with explosive residue and blood from human beings who hadn’t learned to leave well enough alone. Dwelling on those memories, wallowing in them, leads to low places and dark thoughts...but that’s how Bruce has learned how to hold himself responsible.

There are pink scars in the crooks of the elbows where the cables bit deepest. He didn’t know it was possible for the Hulk to scar, for it to linger when so often the transformation wipes him clean. He wonders if the Other Guy would have kept struggling like a coyote chewing off a trapped limb, if this had gone on for hours or days, if Natasha hadn’t doubled down on the lullaby. If she hadn’t been there.

That’s something to think about.

This cable was strong enough to bind the Hulk, designed to secure Captain America in case Erskine and Stark were wrong and they’d created a monster. Bruce could drown in all the fucking irony.

Instead, he carefully zips the bag shut, and slides it under his bed.

The next thing he knows, he’s in the doorway to Tony’s workshop.

Tony’s got a repulsor boot on the bench, and his eyes burn bright when he squints down the barrel of his screwdriver at Bruce, “Can’t sleep?”

Bruce crosses his arms tight over his chest, willing himself to sync up with the world around him. “It must be really late if you’re asking that.”

Tony’s mouth twitches. “C’mon, big guy. Spit it out.”

He digs his fingers into his upper arms. “Your father, Erskine, they hoped for the best, planned for the worst.”

Tony waits, eyebrow quirked. All that time at the mansion, living with Steve, and it’s still like pulling teeth to verbalize anything about the experiment that resulted in all of them being here.

“I think it’s time for me to do the same.” Bruce takes a deep breath and makes himself say it out loud, “Veronica.”

“Finally,” Stark echoes, “Veronica.”

Bruce nods, steps into the lab, and loses track of time completely.

~*~

Clint has sprains and extensive bruising, but his main complaint is a case of cabin fever. Rambunctious kids and a pregnant wife await him at home, but he’s in no shape to disappear for a few days with no excuse for the team. It’s one of the prices they pay to keep the family safe, but she knows the secrecy is starting to eat at him the more he works with Thor, and Steve, and Bruce, even Stark. He’s been keeping family photos in his tac vest, which Natasha thinks is recklessly risky.

She sits cross-legged on her floor, intel from the ice base spread out like a puzzle in her laptop and on the table. Corrupted files, video clips, and burned papers all mix with the bitter Turkish coffee she likes when sinking into a mystery.

Clint lounges on her couch and eats pizza at her, prickly even through his muscle relaxer-induced mellow. He’s quiet for now, shoveling pizza into his mouth and watching a Doctor Who marathon with the closed captioning on, but she knows that can’t last. He can’t resist the Dalek noises. She needs to focus. She may have to boot Clint.

Nat scrolls through the compilation of interviews Hill compiled that got them to that base. Old SHIELD informants, CIA sources, a few pieces of intercepted chatter, all adding up to old Hydra, not new Hydra and frankly, they’d known it was a trap but walked in anyway, so none of this is a surprise. The vibranium cable tech, however, had been a huge fucking surprise and she wants that sorted.

Anything that hamstrung the Hulk deserved further study, but more importantly, they needed to know how much of that was old science fair experiments from Stark Sr’s glory days, and how much was new, or newly liberated from SHIELD locations.

She rubs her thumb over the outer edge of her ear, a needling ache lurking beneath the numbness. Her cheeks and nose are chapped but healing, like her reddened knuckles. There’s a patch on her shoulder blade that’s rough like mesh, and the muscle beneath it pulls.

“Someone could look at that,” Clint chews around the words.

“I’m fine,” she says.

“You’ve got a doctor on speed dial,” he insinuates.

“He’s busy.”

“Building stompy robots,” Clint counters. “Not anything that can’t be interrupted.”

They’d bundled Bruce in a mylar blanket, ropes and all, and Stark had hauled him up into his metal arms. Natasha had tugged on her damp and chilly outerwear and hiked back to the jet, weary and agitated, and had been embarrassingly grateful that Bruce had been passed out, had in fact slept through them landing. Pepper’s spoken to him more than Natasha has in the days since, doing rounds for Steve to make sure everyone’s on track for the charity auction at the end of the week.

“He wants a failsafe,” she says, even though she knows that’s not Clint’s point.

~*~

“Not just concussive force,” Bruce repeats, inexorable.

Stark makes a jerk-off motion with his hand. That’s fine, Bruce will wear him down.

“Yes, newtons and angles and impact area, but it’s that _he can keep hitting_ , can drive you down and keep going.” Mechanics vs theory, and Tony keeps talking about structural integrity and Bruce keeps thinking of a brain bouncing around a cranium, about the coursing bile of rage and the acid aftertaste of remorse. “More metal isn’t the solution. It just makes you easier to hit.”

“So we go with the trap and release system first.”

“The anger is exponential,” he says. “So is his strength. He’s not gonna back down, he’s gonna get frustrated. Ask me how I know.” The anger is its own fuel, its own strength, like PCP in his blood. The red tunnel focus of ire, the blankness of missing time. He’s spent nearly a decade obsessing over his every act of destruction and reckless fury. His memories are hazy, but they’re also filled with blood and bone and gristle. Sobbing, and shame. Bruce knows because it’s just as true for him as for the Hulk. 

Tony ignores this, like he does most of Bruce’s perceptions of Other Guy. “So we use that to direct him, shepherd him way from where he can do harm.”

“I can’t even begin to elucidate the variables you’re ignoring here, so let’s just designate it _Sigma N_ , where _N_ equals all the ways in which you’re fucked…”

“ _N_ is for Negative Nancy,” Tony chews on his lip and pulls up the schematic, fingers dancing.

Bruce reaches for the mug at his elbow, but it’s ice cold, the milk curdled at the surface in an asterisk. He sets it down, centering it equidistant between the TI-84 Plus graphing calculator he’d brought into the lab months ago to annoy Tony, and the tools laid out like a surgical field kit; vernier caliper, micrometer, 0.5mm metal barrel drafting pencil, pleasing but pointless in this futurist’s paradise. Bruce doesn’t need any of these things to solve this puzzle, he needs Tony to see clearly, and build well. Not a Hail Mary of metal alloy and speculation, but a safety net for the worst case scenario.

Despite her plethora of tricks and tools, Natasha can also work with nothing more than eyes and voice and hands. The lullaby is a story, a dual set of manipulations intended to persuade everyone to play nice. She gambles constantly with the Other Guy’s tolerance of her, and things could have gone so, so badly this time. Bruce needs to be prepared for when nice is off the table.

Natasha...he can’t get distracted here. Can’t think of the downward turn of her mouth when Tony had talked about Veronica before. She has to see now that a behavioral protocol isn’t enough.

She has to see what he sees now, her body crushed against the snow. Steve out cold, shield cast aside. Thor still off-world, or worse, broken, because even demi-gods can fall. Clint dead this time. He’s always been a sponge for damage, the most vulnerable, a lightly armored human high up where he can see everyone, and anyone can pick him off. The situation out of control, civilians in harm’s way.

Tony is mumbling aloud to himself and JARVIS: joint reinforcement and balance, deployment container volume, solving for force absorption vs. weight in the absence of vibranium.

Bruce feels gristle and bone snap in the curl of his first, hears the rumble in the back of his head of the Other Guy snarling, _fuck you, Banner, I’ll show you destruction_. He growls back, _seen enough already_.

“Take a look anyway, this is new,” Stark bitches.

Bruce realizes he’s said that last out loud. His mouth tastes funny, and the cup in his hand is empty. He pulls the schematic to his screen, because his legs feel too far away to use.

Unlike any of the versions of Iron Man, the Hulkbuster won’t fit Tony like a suit of clothes, or a suit of armor, or even a space suit. The skeleton of armor is an outline of glowing blue with a bright red payload in the ribcage...a tiny human inside the torso of a behemoth wrecking machine. Finally, Bruce’s eyes shift away. Tony slides a haptic sleeve onto his arm like an opera glove, and stretches his fingers. Motion in the schematic pulls Bruce’s eyes again; fingers waving toodles.

Tony punches and swings, and starts modifying his moves to compensate for the added mass, to apply the momentum of fists heavy as cars.

It’s not built yet, merely precision designed, but Tony is already learning to control and almost feel the gargantuan robot, more than Bruce can currently feel his own body. The figures blur, synchronized motion between light and flesh, the mechanical genius a coherent whole with what he builds.

Unlike Bruce, sitting perfectly still but for the pumping of his heart in his chest rocking his body minutely to and fro, feeling at the same time like he’s dwindling achingly small, and also filling up the whole lab with bloated numbness. His hands are so far away...farther than the city lights outside the windows...his hands could smash those lights out, pluck them out like pegs from a Lite Brite...

~*~

Natasha is still up nursing a glass of wine because she’d booted Clint off her couch and onto his wife’s, and she’s waiting for a cat meme text to signal he’s home safe and sound after the redeye flight. Instead, her cell rings.

“Jarvis,” she looks at the contact, _World Piece, Pvt. Ltd._ , and aims her question at the ceiling, “do you know why Stark’s calling my cell?”

“ _Recent queries indicate a non-urgent matter of some delicacy_ ,” is all the reply she gets.

She flicks the call live and asks, “Delivery or carryout?”

“Hey there, how's it going? I'm talking into the good ear, right? So, I think I created a monster.”

Natasha grits her teeth. “Does this have anything to do with twenty tons of stompy robot?”

“Don’t talk smack about my friends,” Stark says, distracted, sucking his teeth afterward in agitated thought.

She doesn’t know what to do with the prickling irritation that Bruce is now actively working on a backup to his backup, whether it’s at herself for not being enough, or at him for not trusting what they’ve built. Intellectually, she understands his desire for a failsafe. It still tastes of tinny failure, of Bruce and Hulk not only rejecting compromise in favor of escalating the violence, but then dragging in a friend.

Plus, there was the whole hashing out of boundaries and limits and pain, and how those entwined with the promises she’d made to the Big Guy. 

“Stark,” she prompts when the line remains silent. “You called me.”

“I might need a lullaby,” he says. “God, I hate that term.”

“Is there a reason the Tower isn’t on lockdown? There hasn’t been a peep…” she trails off.

“It’s not like that, in fact, it’s almost the opposite.” he says. “Which is not as different as you might expect.”

“Are you in any danger?”

“No!” He wavers, “I mean, I don’t think so. Actually, as far as estimating true danger versus trauma reactions, I might be more accurate if I started just flipping a coin, which is why I called Pepper first, but Pepper referred me to you because apparently when she talked to him earlier he was already kinda zoned out, so--”

“I’ll be right there.”

Natasha takes in the lab like a crime scene. 

Stark meets her eyes for a second, then goes back to working on a volumetric display, hands deep into the mechanics of the super-sized suit. His work area is clean and organized, the trash can filled with food bar wrappers and crumples of stained graph paper, like when he’s putting a project to bed. Robot parts are still strewn everywhere. Natasha thinks they’re just for show, since the soldering irons are as cold as the curdled half cups of coffee corralled on a counter. 

Bruce sits at his workstation, stripped of his customary button-down, stubble covering his face. The corduroys are new, balanced out by the antiquity of a t-shirt stained with coffee, tea, and several authentic curries. That’s not really anything new.

His hands rest in his lap as if meditating, but his eyes are open, a dull unfocused brown pointed at the middle distance in front of him. His area still looks like he’s been pulling all-nighters, but everything within his reach is lined up with incongruous precision. A series of mechanical pencils, a case of extra leads, a graphing calculator that looks like it could launch the space shuttle, and several small machining tools are not only squared up relative to the edges of the desk, but she can see the solitary imaginary line running through each of their middles. Pluck any them of them up at that point, it’d be perfectly balanced for throwing.

“Hey doc...how’s tricks?” she steps slowly toward him, “Bruce?”

He blinks, and says, “No, thank you.” It’s the voice he uses in city crowds, reassuring and polite, but with every dial of his personality turned down as far as it can go. “I’m good.”

Stark’s hands have slowed, and he’s watching her out of the corner of his eye.

“Banner, what’s your wavelength?”

No response except involuntary breathing. Just like the time she tied him down to her bed, and he went away where she couldn’t follow.

“Yeah,” Tony says, “It’s like that.”

“Okay,” Natasha says, "I’ll be right back.”

“ _What?_ JARVIS, lockdown the lab to all visitors. Hey, Romanoff!” As expected, Tony follows, nipping at her heels as she heads to the kitchen. “I know you think I’m dense and bad with people--”

“On the contrary, you’re hyper observant and have created excellent filters as a defense mechanism,” she checks the coffee pot, which is still hot and fresh--Steve and Maria must already be on their way to the mission debrief--and pulls down a thermal mug, “You sample and dump most of the incoming data, but you obsessively catalog the minutiae of the people you care about--”

“Exactly, so tell me why Bruce checking out like he’s wearing noise cancellers for the brain is somehow hunky-dory in your book.”

“It’s not.” Natasha opens the fridge and selects one of Clint’s super-sweet flavored creamers.

“Will you just stop! Stop making a fucking cup of coffee and--” he yanks his hair upward and modulates his voice back down to speaking level. “You’re killing me, here, with the Sweet French Vanilla Creme.”

He pronounces _creme_ as if it really were French.

“Tony, go to bed. Get some sleep, you workaholic idiot. I’ve got this.” Natasha flicks the now blonde coffee against her wrist to check the temp, not too hot to drink unawares. “This is something that humans do under stress.” She mutters sardonically, “Bruce is just an overachiever like always.”

Tony shadows her back to the lab, which is annoying, because yes Natasha has seen dissociation both inside and out, but she’s still going to be pulling this out of her ass and hoping for the best.

“JARVIS,” She holds Tony’s eyes, might as well start the steady and soothing right now. “Over the course of five minutes, dim the lights to forty percent. Same slow taper, bring up the sixth track of my ambient playlist, volume at a quarter of Bruce’s customary setting.”

“ _Sir, I have a request from--_ ”

“End lockdown, J,” Tony blows out a sigh, “let Romanoff work in the lab.”

She takes a sip of coffee. Too sweet and cloyingly creamy. Just right to hit deep in a mammal’s brain. “I’ll ring you if we need anything.”

~*~

The pressure of the light slackens, gives more room to breathe. The lab is quiet except for a faint shushing sound, like lake waves lapping, or a train rocking track in the distance. Bruce doesn’t care for the sound, it’s eroding the soft emptiness around him, scraping him, making him itch and ache.

Tony’s gone, replaced by Natasha. His failsafes are all mixed up.

She sets a cup down by his keyboard, nudging it off true, and picks up a piece of armor. She turns it over in her hand, and Bruce looks over to watch Tony react to her touching his weaponry, but that’s right, Tony’s left.

Now she’s touching Bruce’s weaponry, running her fingers over the black plastic keys of the calculator, across the C-clamp of the micrometer, over the knurled barrels of the drafting pencils, following the plumb line Bruce had strung them along. She plucks up a pencil and lays it across her outstretched finger like a pet finch.

“...of course it balances,” she says through the fading buzzy whiteness. The sound of her voice brings everything to sharp painful clarity. The room is cold. Her coffee smells warm. Her hand lands on his forearm searing hot, and he shakes it off without meaning to.

“Hey doc,” she sounds cautious and he winces. He was rude to twitch away from her, and he jerks his hand toward the coffee like an excuse.

He doesn’t want to hurt her. He was startled. He mutters into the cup, “M’sorry...didn’t see you come in,” which is true enough. His eyes dart back to the windows, but the twinkling pegs of light are now smeared with rosy dawn. He gulps at the coffee.

She stands within reach, arms loose and hands open at her sides. He’s always been impressed with her capacity for relaxed stillness.

Bruce feels the warmth in his belly, and then tastes the sweetness in his mouth. This isn’t her coffee after all. He sets down the mug and looks up at her. She takes her time meeting his eyes, and when he doesn't look away, she sees something in them that brightens her.

“There you are,” she says, stepping forward to brush his cheek and cradle his skull.

The scent of her is sweeter than the coffee, curling through his bones, and like a shock of electricity he needs to be out of the lab. He grips the sides of her shirt and pulls himself to his feet, feels her take the weight he leans on her when his knees and hips twinge from being motionless. He cracks his neck and she squeezes and pets the nape

She scratches into his hair, and he groans.

He wants to let go, wants to feel the sting of her palm against his cheek, wants his arms wrenched tight, his cock throbbing with no relief in sight, the floor hard on his knees. He goes to sink down but she grips his hair tight, keeps him on his feet.

“Been keeping busy, I see,” she says. “Your lab partner went to bed. Does that mean you win?”

He doesn’t want to talk about it, instead slides his fingers into her belt loops and pulls her to him.

She draws her thumb along his jaw, testing the bristles. He remembers shaving that morning... but days of growth rebuke him with missing time, as complete as any Code, but only himself to blame.

He’s ashamed. 

He shouldn’t let her see him like this. He _shouldn’t be_ like this.

“C’mon,” Natasha says, brusque tenderness he has no defense against.

He follows her past the kitchen to the common room, and she pulls him down next to her on a sofa. He’s warmed up enough that the heat of her skin is enticing instead of unpleasant, and he wants to let that heat bleed into him, wants to let her strike against him like waves battering a shore. He cups her face and kisses her, and she tastes like melted coffee ice cream.

She winds around him, and it’s almost enough to keep him inside his own lines, _almost_ , and so he pushes, trying to coax more from her, maybe annoy her a little, get her to put him down. He pulls back her hair and nips up her neck.

The shell of her ear is rough against his tongue, and she pulls her own hair harder to inch away. In the dawn light he sees healing blisters, the pinna still swollen and red around them.

Frostbite.

From being out...from bringing him back.

What is he doing? This is exactly why they need Veronica. 

He slides back off the couch onto his knees, pulling against her hold on his wrist.

“Please,” he says, “I’m sorry.”

Natasha’s eyes narrow, and God, he wants to feel the bite of rope, the smack of her hand, wants to ache and hurt and bleed. He trusts her to be safe with his blood, with his need. She tugs his arm toward her, and pins it against her thigh. He hisses through his teeth, anticipation singing.

“Not a chance,” she says, sliding her other thumb up the tender skin of his forearm, delicate.

He gasps when she rubs across the marks inside his elbow, parallel lines of pink that look like scars but are shockingly tender. Her touch is deliciously painful as she cups his arm and strokes the new mark.

Her voice is breathy, her expression one of awe, “You brought this back.” She raises his arm to press lips against the skin of his wrist. “You came back.”

Bruce drops his head into her lap, nuzzling at the juncture of her thighs, but she digs her hand into his hair, and presses his head against her thigh. He tries to move, but instead she pulls his arms around her hips and cradles his skull, her knees pressed into his ribs. This isn’t a lover’s embrace but a true pinning hold. He’s not going anywhere, held tight, each breath pressing against the frame of her legs.

“Give me a wavelength,” she says, fingers now gently easing through his hair, “and I’ll let you go.”

He doesn’t want her to, but he plays fair anyway, letting out a ragged sigh and settling onto his heels. “It’s a toss-up between x-ray and microwave, frankly.” Opposite ends of the spectrum.

“Yeah, that makes sense.”

Bruce rears up his head, but she’s in earnest. He lets her nudge him onto the sofa, but her follow-up is to start _Key Largo_ on the big screen and wrap herself bodily around him. He’s in no mood to argue, though her touch is so light it’s maddening, leaving paths of itchy tingles.

Humphrey Bogart strolls through a group of mobsters, travel weary, battle weary, wilting in the Florida heat. Still, he wouldn’t squirm like this. Look at him ignoring that blowhard, head on a swivel but cool as cream, while Bruce spends the morning twitching nervily.

Bogie’s finished condoling with Barrymore and Bacall when Natasha clears her throat, “Sometimes, what you think you want isn’t really what you’re wanting for.”

“Interesting hypothesis.”

“That’s not the hypothesis; that’s a data point.” She’s just using her fingernails now, and the hairs on his skin are lifting up to meet her. “My hypothesis is that your tolerance is multiscalar. I’ve identified two axes so far.”

He lifts his head from her shoulder to unmuffle his voice, “Care to elaborate?” She pushes him back down on her bosom and insinuates her ankle around his calf.

“There’s sensation: good, bad, subtle…” she draws a line across his shoulders, then a perpendicular line up his spine, “and then there’s the hidden scale; focus, connection, dissociation.”

Bruce grunts. Maybe Bogart did squirm sometimes under Bacall’s sharp eyes. Probably.

“I’m happy to hang out with you in three out of four quadrants, but I’m not going to help you drive yourself out of your own head.”

Before he can reply, she wraps a hand around his neck and kneads the muscles. The intensity of the pressure catches him after so much tease, and he groans as the tension melts.

By the time he gathers his wits again, he’s swimming against the current, her slow petting down his spine, her breathing gently bobbing his head, the spring daylight slanting golden, making him syrupy and drowsy as Edward G. Robinson monologues about corruption while being shaved with a straight razor. Bruce thinks this is how alligators feel when their bellies are rubbed in the sunshine. Menace suspended.

Natasha has watched this movie with him before, and he wonders why again now. He’s come to know her well enough that he suspects there’s no message or feint, that it’s as simple as that she likes it and is okay with him knowing that about her; hurricanes and meditations on bravery and the never-ending fight against evil. Bogart taking slaps, biding his time, and then killing the criminals who kidnap him. _When your head says one thing, and your whole life says another, your head always loses_. This is her comfort viewing. He unnerved her, but she's not holding that against him.

He thinks about how to make it up to her, but instead falls asleep on her chest like a cat.

~*~

Natasha shows up on Equipment Day as if it’s routine, stepping up on the scanning platform as Steve steps down, wearing the full tac suit that had apparently been devastated by the Mudpuppy Thing’s ichor and blood. The metal pieces are corroded like a leaky battery, the fabric visibly weakened and torn.

It’s not her only suit by far, but whatever secret cabal of tailors and armorers she’s employed to outfit her in battle have not included Stark until today. She’s gladly accepted gear and guns, but not his input on her suits.

Tony’s perched on a short rolling stool, zipping in arcs around Natasha. Her feet are planted and weight balanced like a jock--which Bruce belatedly realizes she is. When she’s in the field kicking ass and taking names, she’s a deadly version of an elite gymnast, an extreme parkour sharpshooting jock.

“You need a set of computer tools, obviously.” Tony speaks from around a piece of card clenched between his teeth. He’s affixing sensor dots to the damaged suit Natasha has agreed to sacrifice to the cause, like the tailor marking with chalk.

"Good luck kitting out her utility belt.” Bruce starts shutting down the model he’d been failing to work for the last ten minutes. “She insists she's not Batman."

“There’s only so much room--”

“Not a full kit--”

“--besides, I’m trained to improvise in the environment. Everything can be a weapon,” she glances pointedly at Tony, “or a _tool_.”

“I’m well aware you can and will use anything at your disposal, I just don’t see the point of improv for its own sake when you can be better prepared.” He peels another dot off the card and presses it to the side of her thigh where her holster rides. “Proposal: for every gram I take off the weight of the whole ensemble, I get to add half a gram.”

“Calculated off the original equipment weight. You can add one gram for each ounce you eliminate, after the first half pound.”

Tony gives her such a look she actually breaks first.

“Okay, I admit that was insulting. Straight metric across the board; you can add one gram for each three you eliminate, after the first three kilos.”

“One for one, after the first two.”

“One for two after the first three.”

“Come on, Bruce is getting bored. One for one after three.”

“Only if I get veto over any changes.”

Tony launches the stool backward to stand and look her in the eye. “Of course you have veto. It’s _your suit_.”

A smile blooms on her face, “Then deal.”

Bruce goes to the kitchenette off to the side, feeling like he needs a cup of tea for this one. Equipment Day is always interesting, if only to watch Tony’s process applied to the movement and equipment problems of a very disparate group of very opinionated fighters. Clint is the pickiest, Thor only gets fitted for comms, and Steve asks more questions than Tony does, which is a feat of itself. Natasha’s only question so far is about the television, and it’s phrased as an observation.

“I assume the Weather Channel is for Steve?”

“JARVIS, CNN on mute.” Tony rolls his eyes, “He has a whole stirring monologue on the tactical value of the Weather Channel: maps and landscapes and architecture, local culture and infrastructure, common and extreme weather patterns across the continent.”

“Oh, I know, I suggested it to him a few years ago,” Natasha says, “I thought it would help him learn to interpret infographics and visually busy screens faster. SHIELD kept giving him hard copy files, and he’d heard paperless was less wasteful.”

Tony scratches his temple. “Well when you put it that way I almost feel bad for teasing him about it.”

She smirks so hard it breaks into a goofy grin, hot and real. Bruce thinks it’s unfair that she spent the entire time he was being measured at the tailor making him fidget, and now that she’s on the scanning platform under scrutiny, he’s still the one fidgeting. He thinks about Clint’s premise that when she cares about someone they become a project, her analytical care a combination of affection and misdirection. Prescribing the Weather Channel to train Steve to parse modern infographics is not terribly different from Tony’s insistence on Equipment Day to outfit his team. Thing is, Bruce Banner has also been observing Natasha Romanoff; the abyss looking back, as it were. She digs into his wiring but he feels her hands when she does it, the way she uses truth on him like it’s her sharpest implement.

He’s been a hell of a project for her. She’s put a lot of herself into it...and he’s been picking those pieces up. She likes it when he can shut off her brain, drive her down until her body stops being a tool to use and becomes a place to be. He likes a challenge.

“Tell me this is not one solid piece,” Tony says, “I’m begging you, please tell me you do not wear a onesie in battle.”

“It’s a tactical jumpsuit, not mix and match work separates.”

“Why the hell not? How the hell do you even get this on and off?”

“You’d already know, but Happy’s a gentleman.”

“Downright courtly,” he agrees. “Seriously, why isn’t this modular? It’s like an armored zentai.”

“Bodystocking,” Natasha corrects, playing with the zipper pull and staring straight at Bruce. “A zentai also covers the head. Technically speaking, _your_ suit is the armored zentai.”

Technically speaking, listening to her like this has Bruce at half-stock. He takes his mug and sits on Pepper’s couch, which commands a full view of the lab. Natasha’s eyes track him and she sends a sly grin over Tony’s head, saying, “Remind me to show you all the hidden pockets.”

“Ooo, like a magician’s tux?”

She runs a finger down from clavicle to cleavage and suddenly there’s a small wicked blade in her hand, “Ta-da.”

Tony shakes his head, saying, “This is better than Christmas.”

Bruce settles in to watch, and to think, and to plan.


	9. Contractual Obligation Holiday Album

### Contractual Obligation Holiday Album

_“It won't do_

_To dream of caramel_

_To think of cinnamon_

_And long for you”_

_\-- **Suzanne Vega**_

~*~

“The tux still fits, you look fine,” Natasha smirks.

“You're anxious,” Clint accuses, flipping through channels at speed. “You only try to handle me when you're pacing your cage.”

“You keep smoothing your cummerbund.”

“Because ibuprofen isn't supposed to be a food group, but I'm a mortal in his forties running around with mofos even crazier than I am. Gives me a tummy ache.”

Steve pauses in his tour around the room to press his lips together, unvoiced concern making him look constipated. Clint keeps talking to Natasha from his elegant sprawl on the couch.

“I can't believe you think it's diplomatic to assume I'm more worried about getting a gut than getting old. Point being, reassuring _me_ won't help _you_ feel better.”

Natasha has learned to take this kind of precision jab from Clint. At least he's only looking at her with his peripheral vision.

“You're keyed up from the last few weeks working half the guest list to set up fifty different serendipitous connections and off the cuff introductions during this shindig. You're debating whether to check on Banner: is he dawdling, is he flaking, is he still hip deep in a flesh printer with Helen Cho?”

Dr. Cho has been spending almost every waking minute in Bruce's lab setting up the test equipment and fussing over calibration runs, small plastic cubes of lacey tissue which smell exactly like when someone would make pot noodle at Akesotech, pork flavoring with a tinge of swamp and metal. The rest of the time she's been stalking Thor like a wildlife photographer, so it's likely she's ditched the lab in favor of a strategic place to spot him in Asgardian formal wear.

None of which eases Natasha's mind about Bruce. She's been keeping a distant eye on him amid her own flurry of preparations for this event, and he's avoided sinking into another work fugue, but she doesn't kid herself that he isn't a flight risk. He really will leave if he considers himself a danger, giant punchy robot or no, and what better time than before a public event he’s been dreading, when everyone's distracted?

“Banner won’t back out, will he?” Steve shoves his hands in his pockets, artfully ruining the line of his tux, laser focus on her unease.

She adjusts the strap of her dress, an infinitesimal shift that’s as showy as Steve’s posturing. “He wouldn’t have promised if he hadn’t intended to follow through.”

“I should be there already,” Steve pulls out his buzzing phone. “Pepper and Stark are downstairs in the car…”

“Go,” Natasha shoos, “I’ll hunt down and deliver Banner. Take Clint.”

Clint waves him off with the remote, “I’m staying on this couch until Banner shows, because if he’s bailing, I’m taking off the monkey suit and watching this ER marathon in my underpants.”

“We will all be there, because,” she fires a pointed look at Clint, “we promised Pepper.”

Clint sighs, and Steve launches into the elevator.

He waits until the doors close to shoot his cuff and tap the face of his watch, “You think he’s stalling to miss the Meet & Greet.”

“No,” She starts to deny, then crosses her arms, “Maybe? Last I heard from Stark, he’d agreed to ‘ _pitch in so the vultures on the internet get photos to peddle, even though capitalism is a disease_ ’. You know, his ‘humanity's a lost cause’ shtick.”

“It's that he laughs when he says that stuff,” Clint leans his head back and grins up at her, “like he thinks he doesn't really mean it.”

Natasha runs a hand up the back of her updo. Bruce's despair of humanity, even as he yearns to protect them, is one of her favorite things about him. “He’s embarrassed,” she says absently, and then wants to take it back. It's not a shared secret, just analysis, but it feels like telling tales out of school. “He’s not Stark throwing money at the situation, lobbing historical artifacts to appease Steve. He doesn’t think he has anything to give.”

Clint snorts. “He could whore himself out as a dance partner like the rest of us.”

She deadpans, “Steve made it very clear there'd be no sex work.”

“Yeah, he had to spell it out for Thor.”

The elevator doors open on the sharp hiss of silk being yanked through itself, Bruce's collar and hair askew as he juggles tie and jacket, his shoes shined but a pant leg caught in the instep. “I know,” he says, “I know, I’m sorry, I’m an asshole…”

He’s chewing on his lip, contrite but mulish, like he knows he fucked up making them wait, but like it’s also their fault for asking this of him.

Nat knows now that that look is self-recrimination and worry turned outward, though no less prickly for it. She ignores the relief that eases her knees and the skin around her eyes, and snaps her fingers at Clint. He rises with an audible wince, and they descend on Banner.

Clint bats his hands away to fix the tie and collar, Natasha fishes his glasses from the jacket and holds both out for him in turn.

He precisely seats his glasses on his face while she takes the liberty of unruffling his overgrown hair. It falls into an easy part, a negligible trace of product on her fingers, and she realizes it's shaped, he's had it cut recently on purpose to be so grabable. She assures him, “It’s fine; we’ll be late but they won’t start without us. Your AMA isn't until nine.”

For all the flurry, he looks good. The suit is the kind of dream that comes with money and taste, the cologne from the same privileged universe, complementing his own warm scent.

“Thanks,” he says to Clint, but he’s looking at her as she smooths down his lapel, and the frenzy is gone from his gaze, leaving something deeper.

They’re eye to eye in her heels.

Clint clears his throat. “Car’s waiting.”

~*~

The SUV is stuck in Manhattan’s rush hour deluge. The vehicle’s state of the art sound-proofing can’t completely drown out the angry honking and gunning engines, but does enough that Clint settles back for a kip.

Bruce completes the circuit of antsy fidgeting he's been running through since they pulled out of the parking levels; he centers the tie knot, smooths down the silk, brushes the jacket stretched across his lap, tries to crack the thumb joints he's already cracked, shifts his feet, checks the traffic, and starts again.

Natasha lays her hand high on his thigh, and he finally stills. He glances at her and then across to Clint, who's fish-mouthed, eyes closed, lax hand crammed down his cummerbund.

“We get there when we get there,” she blatantly uses her taming voice. “We're not that far behind the others.”

“Yeah,” Bruce sighs, lays his head back against the seat. “So there’s still a bummed out Steve to weather once we get there.” He says it like a joke, looking out the window and idly flicking at the weatherstripping, but no one enjoys disappointing Steve.

“His generation coined the phrase SNAFU, he'll deal. And Tony's been itching for any excuse to fly them onto the red carpet--he's exceedingly ill-suited for hurry up and wait.”

Bruce huffs, rueful, and shifts against her. It feels like a prelude, so she takes a slow easy breath and waits him out. Her remark got no quip from Clint, not even a raised eyebrow, which shows he's down farther than expected. Yeah, he's getting too comfortable with these people, just like she is.

“I got caught up,” Bruce says finally, "I wasn’t avoiding this, not really, but I let myself lose track of time…”

She slips her thumb across the fine wool on his thigh. “Late is still present.”

He turns, energy and focus shifting to her, his mouth parted. She holds her ground, humming with the delicate pleasure of his breath mingling with hers. He murmurs low but without seduction, “You look very beautiful.”

He makes it sound like a serious observation, like he's appreciating her art and effort more than her body, and it makes her throat tighten.

“Thank you,” she says, keeping her voice low, keeping the exchange between them. Even catnapping, Clint is skittish and could wake up any second. “Do you want to talk about tonight?”

“What’s left to say? I don’t want to be a disaster. Not sure I can stop it. Dwelling won't help.”

"So let’s talk about something else. Tony said you found some old things of Howard’s in the mansion, that you’re repurposing them?”

Tension drains from him, and there's a spark in his eye. “It’s been a side project.”

She leans in until her forehead touches his, “A stompy robot project, or a...more personal sort of thing?”

"Mixed media," Bruce says, eyes on her mouth, “though there is a scientific element to it.”

She hums encouragement, only half-listening, more focused on the proximity after a long week away, and the sublimation of his nerves into a more useful energy. “Physics? Chemistry? Biology?”

“A little of everything. I’ve got a theory that I want to test,” he says, and very carefully graces his fingertips over her bare arm. Goosebumps rise immediately. “A hypothesis. But I need a very specific volunteer.”

She licks her bottom lip. “Do tell.”

Bruce adjust his glasses, playful but wary of Clint in his periphery. His voice drops another notch, a low thrum that makes the blood beat harder in her ears.

“I’d like to create an effect, observe it over time...more of an anthropological case study since the sample size is one, can’t be helped, the subject is quite unique, so the approach would be a deep dive into the phenomenon, for qualitative data…The environment will have to be highly controlled, lest it skew the results.”

The inseam of his pants is very fine, hand stitched, blazing hot as she runs her fingertips up it. “I assume that I’m the test subject?”

“And colleague,” his eyes are earnest, “this is something you and I would do together, see how far you can go.”

That sends a thrill through her. Asking her permission. “I think I’d like to hear more about the environment, and the parameters.”

“Informed consent _is_ paramount….”

“Indeed.”

“...but perhaps we should table this discussion until a more opportune time for...intellectual deliberation?”

“Bring it, Banner,” she says, dragging her lips against his cheek, “and don’t scrimp on the details.”

He hums, like he’s putting the consequences in her hands, and continues in her ear. "Some time ago, we deliberated the question of quantity versus quality of orgasm.”

It shouldn’t feel quite so illicit to hear him say that word, but it does. It’s not just the setting, but the sensual cerebral cadence of his voice.

“I’ve got some ideas, they keep running through my head.” He’s still playing but his pupils are dilated now, thumb rubbing the back of her hand.

They really shouldn’t be doing this, but she doesn’t want to stop. “Tell me what you’re thinking.”

“You're on your knees on my bed,” he pauses, then surges ahead. “You’re in a t-shirt and nothing else. I'm behind you, so hard I ache, chafed from your rope. In fact it's still around my chest, but you said I could touch and I…I can't keep my hands off you."

Clint snuffles and twitches, head rolling to the other side.

Bruce tenses. He runs a thumb over his mouth, because the heat of his words aren’t frustrating enough in this closed car and mixed company. She thinks he’ll stop, give in to the concern of Clint overhearing, so she breathes out, "Interesting, and...?"

Decades of control keep her voice as steady as her hands, reflex and muscle memory while her brain spins. The miracle is that his stays just as even when he sidles closer, furthering the illusion of privacy.

"You lean your head on my shoulder as I hold you up,” he says, “my cock rubbing against your ass, the rope rough between us. I've got your perfect cunt in my hand, my fingers framing your clitoris with your own lips, sliding soft and wet, teasing." She tightens her thighs at the verbal cues, feeling the rope fiber, the way his big hands would band her clit, the flat utterly Midwestern way he says _cock_ , the precise bite of the word _cunt_ , the pitapat of _clitoris_ , which should sound clinical but only makes her think of his flicking tongue with heat.

"I want to fuck you into the bed.” He’s so matter of fact. “I want to make you howl with laughter.”

She gives a nod, sense memory catching her breath in a little hiccup. The corner of his mouth quirks up against her shoulder and he shakes his head like she’s jumping to conclusions, his hair brushing her ear.

“But I don’t.”

She squirms. She shouldn’t, but hell, she’s not made of stone. “Why not?” she breathes even as Clint’s fists curl and the vehicle lurches ten feet into a different lane. They slide with the momentum, falling back against the seat.

“Because I've promised you this, and you're letting me give it to you. I want you wetter, and trembling, and desperate to come. I want you so high on pleasure and want that you feel it everywhere. That I feel it just pressed up against you.”

His register is so low now it’s like he’s inside her head. She’s heard filthier talk, but not like this. And he’s so warm, the cologne's moved on to rich dizzying middle notes distilled from sex, and fuck, if this doesn’t wake Clint up, she’ll be grateful on a whole different level. She can’t help the breathy laugh any more than she can help her fingers finding his jaw, dragging against the ephemeral smoothness. “That's a good reason.”

“I want you to have that, I want to give it to you like an offering, a tribute. So I stroke your pussy as you writhe, and I tell you how much I want you, and I'm shaking, but it's not enough. Not yet. You can take more. You deserve more.”

He lets that sink in, and she’s lulled by this gorgeous straightforward filth, calm and thorough like a lecture on particle physics. The click of his swallow is the only tell.

“I let you go, and that's so damned hard, but this is for you. Not me. You fall forward, and catch yourself on your hands. All that beautiful skin in front of me, I kiss your spine, the back of your thighs, your ass. How could I not? As much as you can take until you tell me no more, you're too close. It's so hard, but I stop, and you give me permission to take care of myself. I go jerk off in the shower. When you're ready, I come back and wind you up some more.”

His voice is still steady, and Natasha isn't sure what this is aside from ridiculously fucking hot. "I thought you didn't do dirty talk, Banner."

He looks at her then, eyebrows insinuating that she's got her facts wrong. "In the moment I go non-verbal. But we've never talked about build up. What I can do then."

"No," she says slowly, "we haven't. Clearly we should’ve."

Of course they should have. He's spent a lifetime dissociating, shifting emotion to a secondary persona. And maybe she should be pissed that he's using that skill here, on her, but the thing is it doesn't feel like dissociation. He's here with her, and he may look steady but his eyes are glassy and she'd bet he's hard just watching her catch her breath.

Fuck her.

"That's quite a vision," she says, finally. "You’re right. It’s very specific."

"Scientist," he murmurs. "I thrive on exactitude. Particular subject. Predetermined conditions. Precise outcome."

Her fingers have come to rest on the knot of his tie, and his glasses are fogging from the proximity of her skin and the heat they’re generating.

"I want to give you what you want," he says softly. “If you’ll let me.”

His fingers are gentle, calloused as he brushes her cheek, and she presses her lips to his thumb.

The vehicle darts forward again, and Clint sits up.

She drops her hand, and Bruce leans back. His hands are trembling, legs splayed and his jacket still in his lap.

Clint glances between them, suspicious. “We almost there?”

“No,” Bruce sighs, “We’re still miles away.”

~*~

Steve meets them with a smug grin and a live call on speakerphone, “They made it after all Pep.”

“ _And_ that’s _why we fudge the arrival times. Miriam is on her way down_.”

“Copy that.” Steve winces as Natasha clips him on the arm, reacting as much to her ire as her solid fist. “So bad news, we’re still behind. Good news, you’re not as late as you thought you were.”

“I have timelines, too, Rogers. I don’t need to be handled like a wayward Stark.” Her color is still high from their close chat in the car, visible even under the translucent dusting of minerals that obscure her freckles and smooth her face into a canvas she can paint to particular effect.

Bruce straightens his jacket, oddly calm.

Clint shakes his head and strolls toward Miriam with the charming grin she’d complimented so highly the week before, when she’d led them through a fast and dirty PR training session. Bruce runs through the list of pointers on where to look, how to smile, how to say ‘no comment’ without _saying_ ‘no comment’; half of it was reflex after years of passing himself off as harmless and accommodating, the other half was deeply counterintuitive, but he’d offered to do his best.

The press was by invitation and hand-selected by Pepper’s team, news, science and culture outlets both print and online. The New York Times, Wired, The Atlantic, Scientific American, Vanity Fair, plus a handful of online journalists known for their discretion, credibility and reporting.

Still, a bunch of reporters with front row access to the Avengers were going to push for more than photo ops and sound bites, particularly when they’d been cooling their heels for forty minutes.

Bruce remembers not to fidget, and tries to find a balance between stone-faced and grinning like a droog. Even Clint is maintaining some semblance of cool, though he tugs at his bowtie like a noose when a reporter asks Steve if he’s driven by guilt in this particular endeavor. Steve waxes lyrical about community and justice, the honor of serving, the need to care for those left behind with more than words. Bruce turns his face away to whisper in Clint’s better ear, “His speechwriter is James T. Kirk.”

Clint snorts, and as he drops his hands back to the table he brushes Bruce’s bleached knuckles, “At ease, crewman.”

Bruce opens his fist to spread his fingers on the table.

Another journalist asks Natasha if her involvement feels hypocritical, since it was her actions that led to the loss of several agents in the field.

Pepper shares a communicative look with Miriam, poised to cheerfully wrap up the press conference. Next to Bruce, Clint’s jaw ticks.

“We know that any moment can be our last,” she says, precise, no hint of the flushed cheeks and dilated pupils of half an hour ago. “The risk to the agents still in the field was unavoidable, and going public did alert some personnel in time to thwart coup attempts at their outposts.” Her eyelashes sweep down, and she looks back up, bold and open and aching. “Choosing the good of the many over the lives of the few is never a choice that feels justified,” she says.“But it’s what we are trained for. It’s why we do the job.”

The journalist follows up with a sting. “It’s not what _you_ were trained for, is it,” he says, “ _originally_?”

Tension beats in Bruce’s head, a thump of pressure in the arteries beneath his brain that precedes anger. It’s not the first time she's handled difficult questions, but it's not the conversation they should be having, and further, the whole team is a grab bag of cautionary tales of hubris and penance, betrayal and good intentions run afoul, and trying to repair and protect the world--it galls him how much they keep digging at her, wanting to make her the scapegoat. Good people were lost, but it seems to Bruce the need for a villain is about shoring up faith in the government's ability to protect its citizens, after letting rogue elements target them for culling.

He's the last person to intervene in a debate in the merits of problematic superheroes. If anything he should be eyeing the exits, or poking at Tony to create a distraction so the rest of them can tactically retreat. Except Tony disappeared twenty minutes ago with an ominous steel briefcase and a nervous sommelier.

“No, you're correct, I was originally trained as a weapon.” Natasha says, still so steady, so poised. “But after I came of age...some of the people at SHIELD cared enough to give me a real choice, and when I had that, I chose differently.”

“There are reports that over a hundred of your fellow agents were active in the field when you dumped the files--how many made it home?”

“I did,” Clint pulls her microphone to him, dark blue eyes glinting like arrow points in a disarming smile. “Which is lucky, because Romanoff was supposed to feed my goldfish but she was unexpectedly out of town…”

~*~

The orchestra is excellent, thanks to Stark and Pepper, and the ballroom floor has been occupied since they started playing. She’s danced with a diplomat, a museum director and both the son and the daughter of a coffee empresario with ties to a research lab in Costa Rica. Her dance card is teeming with requests. One of the chief investors in Akesotech is here as a plus one, a serendipity she's prepared to turn to the advantage of Bernice.

She’s been delighted and stepped on, fielded questions and compliments and a few cutting remarks, and blushed from one indecent proposal that was pro forma and uninspired, but brought Bruce's dizzying words right back to her.

This waltz with Steve is a welcome palate cleanser.

Steve has turned into a completely adequate dancer. He holds her back the way she taught him, and even manages to lead.

In another wing, Clint demonstrates trick shots. Stark and Rhodes hold court over an impromptu technology salon. Bruce is in a side lounge typing like a fiend for the AMA while Pepper schmoozes and hustles other guests to match her donations per question. It’s possible she saw Thor tending bar. She hopes the patrons enjoy mojitos, the mint muddled by the handle of mighty Mjolnir.

“You’ve got to relax,” she says to Steven. “There’s more tension in your arms than when you’re practicing the thunderclang.”

“I want this to go well,” Steve says, and she taps his elbow and he lets her edge them out of the crowd.

“It is. Clint was only kidding about stapling that journalist to the floor. The silent auction is exceeding expectations. Stark made song birds explode from the champagne and that’s the least destructive thing he’s _ever_ done at a party. This is what you wanted.”

He nods, purses his mouth. “They were hard on you.”

Natasha wishes that she could chalk this up to naivete, instead of misdirected guilt. “I’m a traitor and a killer and a spy, Steve. My presence at SHIELD in the first place was the result of a badly-assigned assassination, because Clint never misses except when he wants to. I’m not redeemable, not like that--not for the people who want a villain.”

“You saved a lot of lives. All of us that day agreed to the plan.”

She shrugs. “I did a number of terrible things, not just for Hydra.” The ache of regret is like an old injury, it doesn’t go away, can only be borne and worked around.

“You're a good person, Natasha.”

She can’t debate this with Steve. It’s so much more complicated than being good or bad. Right now, she’s working really hard on just...being.

He blows a sharp breath through his nose. “They want to hate you, but they still want to put their hands on you.”

Perhaps less naive, and perhaps the guilt was not what she thought.

“I knew what I was getting myself into before I agreed.” The misery on his face stills her. She puts her hand on his cheek, grateful for the heels so she doesn’t have to reach straight up like a child. “It’s nothing I can’t handle.”

“I thought it would be the same for all of us, as a team. People want to be in our orbit, they want to stare at Thor, and see that Clint’s real, and that Tony is…”

“..really that short?”

A faint flicker of pink flares on his cheekbones. “It’s invasive, but innocent.”

“No one’s invading my space, my person,” she says. “It’s a dance, a few moments to show that I’m human. Not harmless, not innocent, perhaps, but human.”

Steve covers her hand. “Thank you.”

~*~

Bruce had been wavering between feeling like a charity case and a dupe ever since he agreed to this online chat interview. Now he’s here, after doing everything he could to distract himself from this moment, and so far he’s keeping his shit together. Pepper and Tony are out in the ballroom seats with their heads together over a tablet, hotly debating the scoring system for the questions, which have been a mixed bag from vulgar to philosphical.

He was supposed to just look at the questions scrolling up on the screen and dictate answers to Miriam’s minion who, unlike Bruce, used all of her fingers to type ninety words a minute and rarely hit the backspace.

_Does it hurt to become the Hulk?_

“It’s...like growing pains, when you’re a kid, but it’s like all of them you ever had happening all at once, plus every bruise and scrape and fall. Combine that with every nightmare where you realize you’re naked…”

_After one of your returns to being yourself from being the Hulk, what is the kindest thing a stranger has ever done for you?_

Bruce thinks of coins and cups, clothes and cautious smiles, and says, “Given me a chance.”

Ten minutes in ( _which of your phd’s was the hardest to get?_ ) Bruce yanks off his tie, apologizes, and takes the wireless keyboard to spew out paragraphs straight from his brain to the three fingers and two thumbs he uses to type. He’s still sweaty and keyed up, but with the trickle of euphoria of successful evasion, the feeling that he might get through this without disaster for his team. His friends.

_Do you think the Hulk is capable of kindness, since you claim no connection to him?_

Bruce sucks in a breath and straightens. Someone hands him a sparkling water over his shoulder, and he drains it. He bends over the keyboard, but rakes his hands through his hair several times before typing, “I may be the last person who can answer this question, exactly because I can never really meet him, I can only observe his behavior afterward and choose my own accordingly. We can’t talk to killer whales either, but we can analyze their reactions to different environments, learn from our mistakes, and always respect that they are volatile and dangerous and capable of hurting us without even meaning to.”

He makes himself breath deep and slow, and let the agitation ebb before tackling the next question. At a familiar whiff he turns, and sees who handed him the water.

Natasha’s wearing her scent for evening meetings, brisk and subtly sweet, a middle ground between the strange perfumes of her cover identities and the clean faint musk of her bare skin. She slides an assortment plate of canapes next to the laptop. “How are you holding up?”

“I feel like that should be my line, after that press conference.”

She’s folded down, forearms resting along her thighs, head low and impossible to spot in the tangle of equipment and chairs. Like he’s goal, like she’s come for a respite. “Eat the hors d’ourves for me. I can’t in this dress.”

Bruce knows she rarely eats when she’s working either, and he’s watched her flit around the room like a hummingbird, sparkling and hustling, making connections and closing deals. Before he can speak, she flicks a finger at the laptop, another question blinking.

_Do you have any additional thoughts on phenotypical analysis of mutations caused by gamma irradiation on S. cerevisiae? Dr. Ross cited it in a paper on its use to identify polymorphisms in human cell cultures. There’s speculation this will pave the way to identifying human mutations prior to birth._

There’s a link to both papers, which he opens in tabs as he rubs at his cheekbone. He’d had no idea Betty was still citing his work. He emails himself the paper, warmed and touched.

Meanwhile, the private message window with Tony is scrolling too fast to read, but the phrases he catches aren’t surprising--the question scores highly on the donation rubric he’s worked out with Pepper, but it raises big red flags as well, Tony’s end comment, _Holy shit, is this clown referring to eugenics on mutants?!?_ Trust an engineer to panic over ethical implications biologists wrestle with every time they request funding.

Natasha’s eyes are keen, waiting for his response. Bruce stuffs a gyoza into his mouth, wipes his fingers on the tablecloth, and begins typing.

“That research was aimed at elucidating dark recovery processes, to see if protective factors extant in _Saccharomyces_ could be adapted to protect humans from radiation exposure,” Bruce pauses for another gyoza. “Or at least, that was the focus of Dr. Ross’s original research. Aside from the non-trivial differences between Brewer’s yeast and most people, a big one being that humans don't excrete alcohol, it’s important for all of us, scientists and lay people, to discuss the applications and implications of discoveries in order to maximize the benefits and minimize the harms for all people, no matter our polymorphisms. On average, each of us carries 1-2 lethal recessives, so you might be the first against the wall when the revolution comes.”

She’s taken her shoes off, rolling and stretching her toes against the carpet. “How many of your questions have come with a reference section?”

“You missed Bryan Greene trolling me about brane gas cosmology, but that descended pretty quickly into Lovecraft jokes. I think Tony called the FBI on the gamma enthusiasts who popped up after that.”

_Now that there’s proof of alien life, what is there to still search for? Why shouldn’t we give up hope? We aren’t unique in the universe. We seem so small._

“More life,” Bruce types. “There’s no shortage of mysteries. The Chitauri were one alien species, and we know nothing of them. The Asgardians are like us, and yet not. They’re legends and myths and people. There’s no reason to feel small in the face of that. We’ve always been small, but we don’t have to be.”

_Marry, fuck, kill -- Newton, Feynman, Chandrasekhar._

“Kill Newton, he was always trying to anyway. Fuck Feynman, no explanation needed. Marry Chandrasekhar; astrophysicists are dreamers.”

 _You physicists are all alike_ Tony messages, _you all want to dick Dickie_

Natasha delicately snorts behind him, slipping her shoes back on. Bruce shakes his head, “He’s not wrong.”

The collective unconscious of the internet submits, _How big is Hulk’s dick?_

Miriam’s assistant chimes into the chat that they’ve reached the end of the hour, and there’s just one question left. This is just as well, since Bruce is stymied for an answer that isn’t either existential or crude. Or both. Tony points out, _The meme potential here is mindboggling_.

Natasha pats Bruce on the shoulder, “He’s not wrong,” and heads back into the fray. She’s going to work the place until close. He watches her sway, wishes he could follow her onto the dance floor and share this ebullient mood with her. Instead he turns back to the screen for his last question.

_what do you wanna be known for?_

Bruce pauses, and puts his hands in his lap, nodding for Miriam’s assistant to transcribe as he fidgets and gathers his thoughts.

“It’s a complicated question,” he says finally, “I’m a scientist. I’d love to be known for something I’ve given to the world, not something I’ve taken from it. But the truth is, I don’t know if I’ll ever find that balance. If there will ever be the chance for me to give enough back.”

He takes off his glasses. The assistant watches Miriam, who’s watching Pepper. She types his answer, but won’t hit enter until Pepper nods.

“I want to be a warning,” he says. “Of the ways hubris can cloud our vision. Of the perils of not looking at whether we should instead of whether we can. Science does not exist in a vacuum. Discovery cannot stay purely intellectual. I’d love to be known for what I gave the world, who I was to the people in my life, but ultimately, I want to be known as someone who made the world, or at least an element of it, question.”

With a click, it's over.

“Well done, Dr. Banner, thank you,” Miriam shakes his hand while Pepper chats with the assistant.

Tony saunters up with the tablet held up in front of his chest, displaying what looks like a phone number, but is actually a donation total.

Delightfully surprised by humanity, Bruce stuffs himself with canapes and flees for the Tower on a high note.


	10. Live and Unplugged

****

###  **Live and Unplugged**

~*~

_Holding back the tears_

_Chance for me to escape from all I know_

_Holding back the tears_

_'Cause nothing here has grown_

_I've wasted all my tears_

_Wasted all those years_

_Nothing had the chance to be good_

_Nothing ever could, yeah_

_\-- **Simply Red**_

~*~

Days later, at a different party...at the last party...Natasha slips behind the bar. It’s a friendlier group, and the counter allows her to shoo away chatty guests with a drink and a smile. More importantly, it’s a vantage point to watch Bruce perambulate through the crowd in a tightening circle toward her. They haven't had a chance to talk about how things changed the other night, after the benefit auction. Especially now that the scepter mission has been put to bed.

Bruce picks his moment, strolling in the least casual manner she’s ever witnessed, but closing the gap. She starts making him a cocktail, orange pink like a sunset. 

She’s polished and urbane, and she’s _terrible_ at this, because the secret is that the murderous monster they’d gentled wasn’t his.

Now it's her turn to coax and charm and she has to do it as herself. She's awkward, he's reticent, this thing between them has transformed into a creature with a mind of its own, and she's making the same case as before that this force may be out of their control...but it could be so good if they give it a chance.

Later, when she pulls Bruce down off the bar, knocking the breath out of him with her braced chest like an airbag to soften his fall, she can still smell the blood orange soda and the gin.

~*~

Flight and fight are reflexes etched in Bruce's bones. Standing in this cluttered room as Natasha dryly outlines the horrors she’s endured, as if she isn’t choking on grief and despair, as if these are trivial and slightly embarrassing responses best left locked away tight, this is the first time he’s felt frozen. He aches with her pain, and is perversely relieved that it pushes his own shame down for a moment.

He steps toward her, but they’ve been reduced to raw reflexes, so they tear at each other instead. Natasha smothers the hurt like binding a wound. Bruce lashes out; he’s got more than enough self-loathing to share.

Even that's not enough to make him stop thinking about how to salvage this, not nearly enough to stop him craving her gentleness and her ruthless brilliance. Maybe this isn't the end between them. Maybe it's punctuated evolution...

~*~

The concussion is negligible, but Natasha makes a show of barfing in a front corner of her cell.

It would be worth the trouble just for the endorphins, but as she expected, Ultron turns away from her wet animal biology with dismissive disdain. As if he isn't racing to lodge his own consciousness inside a simulated meat suit of biometalloids and pot noodle broth.

She props herself against the obsolete electronics left to oxidize forgotten in this cellar cage. The cartons of old invoices would be softer, but they're damp, and aren't nearly as useful to her. After a few minutes of a convincing shiver, the Ultron system noticeably downgrades her priority level. What danger could she possibly present?

She takes a moment to acknowledge that Stark wasn't wrong about the set of computer tools he tucked just inside a hidden zip on her forearm.

Partway through, a drone minion scuttles up, dragging a hose. Natasha braces, curling her wrist under her head to hide her project.

It rinses the vomit toward the drain, beeps at her, and scuttles off.

It’s left the hose trickling by the floor drain where she can reach it, to rinse out her mouth, to drink and wash. Interesting.

~*~

Hour after hour Bruce brings Clint cups of treacly sweet coffee, spelling him at the receiver whenever it cycles through his kidneys. His heart drops into his stomach every time an ephemeral sweep of clicks comes through.

In those moments, he knows Nat’s alive.

All the moments in between rub his nose in the fact that she could already be dead, that she could be the first of millions, that he's also responsible for _this_.

He knows what he needs to do.

~*~

Natasha knows it makes sense. The team decided Bruce should fetch her, and he went. They all know the major firepower they were sending her wasn’t the big fucking gun Bruce hauled along with him. Romantic protestations aside, Bruce knows what he’s getting into with every step into a battle zone.

Hulk is a force multiplier to save far more lives. It would be stupid not to let him, even if she hadn't given him her word as a teammate. When she shoves Bruce to circumvent the discussion, she knows it will cost her later, but there is no other choice she can live with.

She kisses him, giving herself a moment to remember that night. Then Natasha shoves it all down, shoves him down.

_~*~_

_Come to me_

_I'll take care of you_

_Protect you_

_Calm, calm down_

_You're exhausted_

_Come lie down_

_You don't have to explain_

_I understand_

_\-- **Bjork**_

~*~

Natasha stays until the benefit wraps up, riding back to the Tower with Steve and Pepper and Tony, conscious that she’s a fourth wheel but amused by it. They drop her off on the lab floor, and continue on up to the penthouse.

She strolls into Bruce's lab to find him with Helen Cho, bantering over a pot of tea about the differences between people and yeast. For a change, the place doesn’t smell like freshly printed flesh. Instead a scent of woods and smoky ozone lingers, evidence she just missed Thor, still in his dress cape.

This explains Helen’s flushed cheeks and air of distraction.

Bruce has changed into the clambake sweater and corduroys. Natasha's shoes dangle from a finger by the straps like a brace of dead game, but she still gives his ragged pants a sidelong look. They're the ones she busted off him months ago.

“I had pliers,” he says, pouring her a cup, “easy fix.”

Helen asks about the benefit, and Natasha’s tired enough that she doesn’t care to filter, just gives her a summary of the contacts she’s made and connections she’s facilitated. Paid internships and scholarships for kids who’ve lost their parents, grants and job opportunities for spouses grieving loss and betrayal, the way the right whisper in the right ear can change someone’s life, and how puzzling out those parameters is half the fun.

She stops to drink her cooling tea when she sees she’s distressing Helen, who’s far more comfortable manipulating the physical than the psychological.

Tacitly amused, Bruce changes the subject to food, namely the all night gyro place Thor frequents for his cones of meat, especially when the other Midgardian fare he’s been eating has been too fussy or sparse. Helen makes excuses shortly afterward, and leaves the lab pulling up a map on her phone.

For a wing man, he’s surprisingly subtle.

Natasha’s stomach growls.

“Come on,” he takes her coat over one arm and hooks his fingers through hers, “I’ve got some leftovers with your name on them.”

“Just leftovers?”

“I was thinking first aid,” he adjusts his glasses as the lift zips to his floor, “not seduction.”

“Seduction implies you’re still trying to sell me on the idea.”

“Ah, but I am.” He lays his palm on the door lock, but doesn’t go in. “At least, on the idea as outlined.”

“Where you tease me out of my mind.”

“Yes.” He turns to face her fully, and she’s weirdly aware of the height she’s lost in taking her heels off. “Where I try to get you out of your own head, down into your body, no thinking, no goal, no expectation, just feeling everything. Maybe, eventually, you come.”

She swallows. What she’s feeling right now is like the moment when a conversation becomes a fight, the teetering edge of the feral, and her heart pounds. That he can stand there in his glasses and sweater and strip the civility from her with a few words, the promise of his body and the deviousness of his mind...

“Food first,” he takes her shoes and nudges her over the doorstep with a gentle hand on her back, just below where the dress dips down. “I’ll get it ready while you get comfortable.” He sets her things on a chair, shrugs out of the sweater, and ambles off to the kitchen.

This is only the third time Natasha has been in his suite, technically only the second time she’s been invited. His evening lights are low, the colors warm and soothing. She leans against the jamb and watches him puttering in his kitchen, reheating pasta and vegetables in a pan, pulling out a tub of olives, snipping herbs growing out of an earthenware Hulk head sitting on the counter.

He turns at her snicker, playing his defensiveness for more laughs, “Pesto Hulk was a gift.”

“Tony got half a dozen of them. I think you’re the only one who’s successfully sprouted him.”

“Green thumb.”

Natasha groans but his smile is infectious, making her feel the incongruity between her formal wear and his soft clothes. Barefoot, yes, but still in uniform, while he’s been stripped down to civvies for hours. “I should change.”

“Can I ask…” Bruce pulls down a plate, and chews thoughtfully at his lip. “Would you take off your makeup? I’d like to see you...”

That’s the thing, isn’t it? The thing they’ve been circling around with these confessions and discussions, these forays into each other, for her to let him see into her the way she can see him laid bare. For self-honestly to be something other than brutal exposure, for it to be pleasure and comfort and revelation. Something shared. Scrub off your makeup, be real for me.

“I’ll get cleaned up,” she offers, “and I’m stealing some clothes.”

He bites back a smile and waves his spatula, “By all means.”

~*~

He finishes setting up the bedroom and is splitting cherry tomatoes when she walks in, wet hair combed back against her skull, face scrubbed clean. She’s settling his sweater down over her hips, the threadbare collar of an old t-shirt peeking out. She's still faintly steaming, her feet bearing the cruel imprints of her strappy heels, and he knows from experience she won’t like them touched until they’re no longer sore.

He hasn’t committed any of these observations to paper or screen, treating them like the data he gathers on himself, too sensitive to be written down.

Natasha teases gently, “You didn't join me.”

“I should have,” he murmurs, “but you’re mean when you're hungry.”

She snickers softly, eyes sparkling. His knife skids across the cutting board, startling them both.

“Careful.” She takes his hand. “Nothing ruins the mood like decontamination procedures.”

She smells like the fancy moisturizing body wash he’d boosted on the Wyoming mission, geranium and almond, and her pulse thumps at the base of her throat. He turns back to the stove, wetting his lips, and dishes a bowl, swaddling it in a kitchen towel.

She hops up on the counter, twirling a fork, and cradles the bowl to her chest.

Bruce cleans up, brushing against her bare knees as he wipes the counter around her, putting things to rights in a way he hopes is soothing to her sense of order. She lets out a long satisfied exhale, slowing down at the bottom of the bowl, long lashes sweeping her cheeks.

A wash of affection slams into him, like he’d been hungry to feed her, leaving him sputtering. How had this happened? Wanting to care for her, soothe her and coax out her demons. The lust he understood, even the trust, sure. The negotiation, the fucking, even the pain and submission--but this? He wants to wrap her in a blanket, take her to bed, lay his head on her hip and read while she sleeps. He wants to wallow in her presence.

But first...he wants to make her come her brains out.

~*~

_Chauvinistic computer_

_It's time someone programmed you_

_You fall in love too fast_

_And hate too soon_

_And take for granted the feeling’s mutual_

_\-- **Prince and the Revolution**_

~*~

“What’s with the collection by the sink?” Natasha had chosen from dozens of travel-sized soaps and toiletries, pinched from the hotels the team had crashed in over the past year.

Bruce leans against the counter, watching her eat. Her knee is pressed against his sternum, and he’s gently massaging her calves, running his thumbs up the sides of her shin bones. It’s maddening and delicious. “I like ‘em, they’re portable.”

Old habits like the threadbare shirts, the folding money sewn into his reinforced waistbands.

She hooks her heel around his waist for leverage to reach the sink. He runs a hand up her thigh, nudging up the t-shirt and sweater while she fills the dirty bowl with water and a squirt of soap. “So you are wearing underwear.”

“You like to take them off me,” she says, straightening up to sit flush against him. It’s the pair she left in his rooms after the waterpark mission, laundered and neatly folded atop his dresser. They’re black, sport mesh fabric designed to wick underneath her flexarmor suit, but they’re already damp from more than the shower.

He quirks that lush mouth and slips a finger under the waistband, tugging them low. He bends and kisses the skin now bared. She digs her hands into his hair, biting her lip at the brush of his mouth, the rough stubble, how close he is to where she really wants him.

All night she wore that black dress, and those heels, and the persona of who this specific audience expected her to be, to give them what they wanted so she could take what she needed in return. It is her job. Her vocation and avocation. She is very, very good at her work...but all night she had his quiet voice thrumming in her skull, this remarkable, difficult, humbling man who wants to drive her out of her mind. Instead of distracting her, it had felt like a reward waiting for her. To come home to him. To shed the targeted persona, to strip down to bare skin.

His breath is hot against her center, and she cradles his skull, revelling in the silk of his hair. Anticipation eats at her, leaving her vibrating with want. She tugs him up to her mouth, his bright eyes observing from under his lashes even as she kisses him. She lets her own flutter shut.

Let him watch.

Bruce’s fingers curl on her hips, tongue stroking, and it’s a spark. She growls, tightening her thighs around his waist, but he cups her cheek, murmuring against her mouth, “Come with me.”

Natasha hesitates. She’s played at being in other people’s hands all night, and now she wants some of her own back. Unlike the job, Bruce doesn’t intend to take from her. Can she really let him lead, let him bring her to the precipice and keep her there?

He catches her hesitation, and simply offers his hand. Broad palm, long fingers, delicacy and destruction. “Please.”

She’s done harder things.

He guides her to the living room couch and onto his lap, and then they’re kissing again with messy sweetness. Faint stubble rasps her cheek, her neck, tongues sliding velvety, and she finally strips off the sweater with impatience. He sucks his own lip as he watches her pitch it onto a chair, then drags her back to his mouth for more slow drugging kisses. Every time excitement quickens her pace, his hands on her back sooth down, the heat of his palms soaking through the fabric of her shirt, the heat of his lap through the rough fabric of his pants.

She’s lost track of the timing of things. Her hair is dry, her lips swollen. She feels too sensitive to still be kissing with even these few clothes on, hands deferential if not chaste. The shape of him straining under his fly makes her mouth water. She moves to unbutton his shirt but he stops her.

“Not yet.” He’s a little smug, a little triumphant, in spite of the haze of lust.

“Seriously?”

Bruce shifts, sinking back into the couch, and she moves with him so they’re a tangle amidst the cushions. She reaches for his zipper but he grabs her hands, pulls them to his mouth, kisses her fingers and then bites at the inside of her wrist at the pressure point -- the same place she taps on his alter ego to signal an impending transformation.

“C’mon,” she says, nearly a whimper. 

“Have you ever just kissed, made out like teenagers, dry humping on the sofa?” he asks, but it’s kind, not taunting. “I was so quick to move past this when I was young, but it turned out to be the key, afterward. Steady and slow, ebb and flow, tantric for agnostics. I wanted to show you...you can sit with suffering and pain, but I wanted to see you sit with pleasure, unfocused, washing over you.”

Even after she took control of her own body and separated _sex_ from _work_ , she’d never rolled around without the intent of completion. That was the point. “I’ve never.”

He kisses her again, hand tangling in her hair, and he murmurs, ”Yeah, but let’s.” His mouth is so sweet, his body so pliant and warm against hers, the press of his erection, even behind the bent brass teeth of the zipper, so heady against her thigh. Only this aimless frustrating pleasure, offered as if it were a decadent dessert.

She squirms against him, bites at his chin, his jaw, and he throws his head back. “All this messing around,” she murmurs. “I know you’ve got a plan, but this is all...just show. We...I don’t know why we’re…”

He cups her breast under her shirt. She moans, licks into his mouth, feels his cock jump. His thumb brushes her nipple, the back of his fingers skimming her ribs, slipping over the hollow of her spine, and sliding down to fondle her ass.

“It’s the beauty of the desert,” he murmurs, “Trust me...please.”

She does. She wants to. She thinks she can. He strokes the cheek of her ass like it’s a comfort, instead of something that makes her want to fight back, take him in hand, fuck him without mercy. He pulls back his head, and shifts to his back so she’s straddling his lap, his hands cupping her face.

She braces her arms on the couch arm and feels like she’s going to fly apart, angry and horny, frustrated and longing to feel his skin against hers.

He grounds her with the sound of her name, “Natasha,” giving that to her like speaking a charm.

She hates that he can do that, and she craves the magic of it.

“We don’t have to do it like this,” he says, ‘you don’t have to cash a check my mouth wrote.”

She looks him in the eye.

“We can go into the bedroom. You can tie me up, I can fuck you, we can bring you off however you want, and you can get dressed and go home. Hell, we can eat dessert and watch a movie. We can do whatever you want.”

She thinks about the offer, and about what he’s not saying. “But that’s not what you want.”

“No.” He shifts beneath her, still rock hard. “Ideally I’d like to explore this, but _with_ you, not _on_ you. I can take care of myself whatever you choose.”

He trusts her with so much, his life, his pleasure, his monster. To bring him back, to put him under, to protect those around him. She trusts him to know his limits and boundaries. To do his best. She can, she hopes, she thinks, she wants, to trust him in this. To put her pleasure in his capable hands completely.

“Okay,” she says, “yes.” She leans down with the idea that the kiss itself is the end game, the stroke of his tongue, the drag of his lush mouth, teasing hands, all that she can touch with her lips and teeth, revelling in the rub of his cheek that brings heat and sensitivity to her skin.

~*~

He’s so hard by the time they get to the bedroom, her thighs tight around his hips, lips so swollen and cheeks red, that he’s a little worried about his own stamina. He’s been talking a good game, but he’d worked out a lot of these theories during solo work, not with a partner who outclasses him on several measures.

Natasha drops onto his bed with a bounce, sprawling luxuriously on his sheets. They’re soft, the color of cocoa powder, and the first thing he’d bought himself for this place. That they harmonize with both her sunset hair and her rose-blotched complexion, well, it’s certainly not his luckiest break here.

She’s slipping her thighs against each other hypnotically as he skins out of his clothes, hands up above her head, grinning at him. The t-shirt rides up, exposing her soaked panties, and he can smell her. She’s clearly expecting him to go down on her. Bruce’s hands shake a little, but his mind is clear, running parameters and expectations and past data. Oral is an easy climax, especially if she’s not on her back, so that’s going to be further down the set list tonight.

“Interesting opening gambit,” she comments as he rolls on the condom, but when he grabs her thighs to draw her to the edge of the bed she does most of that work with a little undulation of her core.

He rolls her to her stomach and hooks a finger in the leg of the panties, pulling them to the side, nudging her knees apart with his own. He takes his sweet time lining himself up, heat and tease, but she doesn’t thrust back impatiently as he expects her to, though she does squirm to give her clit some action.

He gives himself a moment to gather his fortitude before pushing in with one slow deep stroke, which she’s wet enough to take with a groan of pure want.

He tugs her back so she can get purchase on the floor and then he’s fucking her like he’s been dreaming of for a month, since the goddamned mudpuppy assembly. The noises she’s making are so gratifying as she fucks back against him that he lets himself feel the temptation to bring her off right then. But he’s got a plan, or rather, he’s got an agenda and a beautiful, amazing woman who’s giving him a chance to crack her open with pleasure.

She contracts around him and he reaches around her, stroking down her belly, fingers over the lips of her sex, rubbing the edge of the panties against her clit, rough enough so she jumps and twitches, curses at him. He lays a hand flat on the small of her back, pinning her so he can drive harder.

He feels her body tighten down close to the edge, and he grinds slow and deep until he feels her breath catch.

Bruce pulls out and slaps her ass - he’s feeling good enough to risk taking his life in his hands - and sinks back on the carpet, cock in hand, dodging her heel lashing out half-heartedly.

After an expectant pause in which he simply gasps for air, she demands, “Are you kidding me?” voice muffled, hands fisted in his sheets.

Her uniform spankies are a ruined mess. He rolls up to tug them off with his teeth and free hand, and she hiccups a laugh that’s half need, half incredulous delight. She wiggles around and the panties go sailing across the room, leaving her sprawled on the floor, pale leg draped over his, wet slick along her thighs, watching him with a hooded gaze.

He strokes a finger down her shin and she shivers, like she’s riding her own bucking hips, eyes flicking between him and his cock. “Could you come?”

He snorts, “Duh.”

“Do it,” she says. “Let me watch.”

“Bossy,” he says, “not yet.” It stings to say it, but he doesn’t want to come this way, doesn’t want to give in to his own body and have to ride out the post-orgasmic haze. He wants the energy high, and concentrated on her, on making her ache with it and lose herself in it. “First, ice cream.”

The look she gives him is murderous outrage, and he can’t help but smirk as he backs out of the bedroom. His walk to the kitchen is more lively than usual, the hairs between his shoulder blades rising, but she takes her time stalking after him.

Bruce offers her a dish, “There’s a ribbon of salted caramel in it. You’ll need your electrolytes.” He forgoes a dish for himself, digging out a hunk on the wooden spoon and heading back to the couch. He gestures with it for her to have a seat.

Natasha drops onto the cushions petulantly, milking it a bit. She’s lit up and nervy, so he dims the lights and settles cross-legged on the floor in front of her.

“Heart rate is a red herring,” he explains, then bites off a chunk of ice cream, letting it melt in his mouth. “But it took patience and data to figure out the difference between arousal and loss of control. Climax was a risk I only took in depopulated areas; the rest of the time I worked on making peace with the frustration.”

Her pique is also melting, but she’s giving that spoon delightful nibbling head. That’s fine, that’s kind of his point.

“I used to think of it as an itch.” Bruce licks the spoon clean. His molars ache from the cold. “That it was all about the scratch.” 

“You scratch my back, I’ll scratch yours.”

He shakes his head and reaches to shift her to the edge of the cushions. “It’s not an itch, it’s _awareness_. It’s being alive to the pleasure out there in the world, feeling your skin, and your heartbeat, the air temp, every scent on the breeze. It’s hyper-awareness and hunger for touch.”

Her hand is still cupped around the empty bowl on the arm of the couch because she’s caught up in staring at him slide his hands up her thighs. She’s still letting him steer, which is unnerving and making him talk too much.

Bruce murmurs, thinking that if anyone could understand this stupid journey he’s been on, learning the obvious like it’s sublime, wrestling with the terror of humanity all around while thinking there’s not enough humanity inside of him, it might be Natasha. “It’s vulnerability, being open to pleasure makes you more open to pain, so we want to satisfy the need and close the door quickly. But that’s not the only option.”

She’s savory after the sweet, heady like a narcotic, and when he swipes his cold tongue on her she rumbles out an “Ohhhh,” that he can feel in his mouth.

Her hips rock as he continues to taste, to nip and lick her. Her quads twitch under his palms, and he rubs his rough cheek against the delicate skin at the crease of her thigh, riding the breathtaking rush that she's allowing, embracing this, the evidence of her strength under his hands. She grinds against him. He palms her ass, thumb rubbing between the cheeks, pushing with just enough pressure for her to buck and then settle. He licks the abraded skin of her thigh, stubble against her cunt lips to up the tease, bites at the crease drawing a sharp gasp before suckling away the pain, lathing it with his tongue.

She hiccups, twists as shivers roll through her. The ice cream bowl thunks against the carpet, accompanying the twitch of muscle as she pushes against his face.

Laughter hits him like a wave, the sheer delight of making her feel this, and he abandons any thought of subtlety, focused on drawing out another moan as his fingernails drag along her outer thighs. He sounds unhinged, muffled, but it’s giddy joy.

She grabs his hair with a sharp jerk and yanks his head back.

Her pupils are blown, and she’s messy with want, but she focuses, stares down at him. His face is wet from her, he can feel the burn in his cheeks, and he could stay here all day. He wants to put her at ease, thinks she’s checking for safety’s sake. 

“We’re good,” he says, then makes it a question. “Yes?” He continues to stroke her legs, fingers light and taunting, her skin impossibly soft and etched with silver lines of scars. She wiggles and twitches, holds his gaze, then finally she pushes off the couch, sliding onto his lap.

He’s hard again but not really thinking about it. It’s just another state of being, just another piece of his desire for her, but she’s so wet, slick against him, grinding, and when she kisses him viciously, ice cream and salt mingle with the taste of her, such sweetness and aggression in her kiss.

It’s glorious and distracting, her nails raking his scalp, her lush breasts through the thin t-shirt, the curve of her ass in his hands.

“I’m supposed to be making you crazy,” he murmurs.

“You are,” she says. “But I thought the point was opening myself to pleasure. No goals, just…” She trails off, and she’s teasing, as biting as the scratch along his neck. “This.”

He kisses her neck, nibbling and sucking along her jaw, dragging his nails down her back, her ribs, round her hips and bony knees, the soft underside of her breast and the crook of her elbow, revelling as she writhes against him. He’s losing himself in the press of her belly against his, the squeeze of her thighs, the way she fits in his arms, their bodies moving effortlessly together. It’s taken them time to get here, and he’s dizzy with it.

“So,” she breathes, pulling back again, “in this universe where getting high on not fucking is a substitute for actually fucking, what do I get to do?”

“Whatever you want, Natasha, I just--”

Her tongue strokes behind his teeth and he jerks up against her. 

“I want to touch,” she says, pink-cheeked and glassy eyed. “While you play, I want to play with you, too.” She squeezes around him, using her python strength to stroke her whole body against him, her kisses growing sloppier and more desperate.

Alongside the lust there’s a deep tightening in his belly, a beautiful ache, want and affection. Something bigger that he refuses to examine. She’s acquiescing in her own way, taking as much as she’s receiving despite her reflexes to shift the focus away from herself. He can give her this. “C’mon, let’s go back to where it’s soft.”

~*~

Natasha gets to her feet as awkwardly as he does, dazed and blissed out, and he leads her down the hall by their tangled fingers. She suspects his whole apartment is going to smell like sex by the time they’re done.

So often in their encounters, she’s approached his body like a map to his pleasure - the way the rope binds his arms, his knees, the way it slips between the cheeks of his ass, frames his cock and his balls, the aim sensation and containment and longing. The way his cheeks flush up red with slaps, the raising of bruises and bitemarks, the long scratches of red down his thighs from her fingernails.

She’s understood that Bruce translates those minor pains, that theatrical confinement, into a pleasure that almost supersedes orgasm. But to hear him put his own understanding of his psyche and his systems into words, to hear him articulate how sublimating climax pushes him into further self-awareness...it hits home for her as much as the hedonistic teasing. Sex alloyed with insight has made her giddy.

It’s like she’s plunged her hands into the heart of him, finding it bloody and glorious. Wondrous. She strips off the t-shirt and downs the glass of water he offers, watching him fuss about the room.

He plumps pillows, pulls strips of condoms from the night table drawer, shifts a surge protector within reach, fetches washcloths, and then finally goes into his closet. He carries something out by two handles, precious like a Thanksgiving platter coming to the table.

“Is that, by chance,” she delicately wipes her mouth and sets the glass carefully on his dresser, “a Baccarat punch bowl?”

It gleams and glitters, cut crystal, the gold fittings fashioned into iris leaves and buds. It presents a fanned bouquet of sex toys, nestled on a rumpled hand towel.

Bruce presses his lips together and sighs primly out of his nose. “I’m entertaining.”

“Yeah,” she notes that even the Hitachi has a fancy silicone head, “you really are.”

She rolls onto the bed and stretches as he downs a glass of water.

“You know,” she gestures to the punch bowl of sex, “those don’t seem practical if you have to hit the road.”

He ducks his head, but doesn’t blush, then meets her eyes. “Taking them with me would be beside the point.”

“All of this...largesse...It’s for me?” It’s pointless to pretend otherwise, but there’s investment here that she feels must be recognized. For Natasha, this thing between them has been about pushing herself as much as him. His ability to analyze and challenge her both scares and thrills her, and so she needs him to help her speak this aloud. It can no longer remain implied and inferred.

He dithers in putting away the glass. She reaches out to tap a bottle of water-based silicone-spiked lube, and lets the silence draw him out.

“I did my research out of curiosity,” he admits, as earnest as his erection, if not quite as straightforward, “and for once I had the funds to invest in the equipment to truly test it.”

“And so you’ve been waiting for the opportunity?”

The pause hangs between them. 

She wants to hear him say it.

“Yes,” he breathes and it fills her with a kind of awe. “I’ve been planning this for you.”

“You truly want me sobbing to come,’ she says, as if she were the one taunting him instead of this being an interlude for her to catch her breath, “don’t you?”

The psychology of it pleases the social scientist in her, the collector of information on human behavior. She’s delighted and proud of him. It’s both sublimation and domination and that delights her. Unnerves her. Who is he to ask this of her?

That’s a question she’s starting to have an answer to, and it terrifies her in the best way.

“I’d like to do this for you, and with you, and to you,” he stalks across the bed to hover over her body, all promise and delicious threat. “To use this delightful array of equipment to bring you to the very edge of orgasm, to get you to stop thinking, to just feel.”

She wants to say, _you always do that_ , but she can’t. She’s told him before, but in this charged space between them tonight, the admission feels too big.

He’s waiting her out now, eyes impossibly soft and dark, the scent of his skin rich.

She could still walk away from from this. Borrow a pair of pants. Go sleep off the benefit, transcribe the mental notes she was taking all night on the contacts and connections she made. Keep this thrumming energy inside her, or maybe bring herself off to thoughts of his cold tongue tracing her cunt like seeking out a ribbon of caramel.

She slides her legs up along his sides, soft hair and satiny flanks making her inner thighs tingle, and tells him, “Don’t pull any punches.”

Bruce groans, but can’t hide his smirk.

~*~

She’d sprawled back against his chest for a good long while, hands clasped behind his neck, while he traced fingernails over the soft skin of her inner arms, her belly, the underside of her breasts. He’d gently scraped his teeth against her neck, the healed shell of her ear, fingers skirting around her nipples, her clit, luxuriating in the tease, drawing out shivers from the unlikeliest places.

The flutter of muscle in her belly and thighs as she grew twitcher and twitchier was astonishing, but this...

The little hiccuping noises she makes as she clenches around his four fingers, her own hands flexing senselessly above her head, hips rolling as the Hitachi rhymically buzzes her clit...that sound is something precious that he will keep forever.

They’ve been at this for more than an hour, only now moving on to vibration instead of hands and mouths and slim, slick toys.

He’s letting the wand head touch her just enough, clicking to a different rhythm whenever she catches too much of a groove, and she gets almost all the way through a derisive, “Hitachi’s are so old-school,” before bucking up between _old_ and _school_ when he ramps up the intensity. 

“Classic for a reason,” he says and licks her nipple. It’s taut and rose pink and _right there_.

Her thighs tighten like a vice and he turns off the vibrator, letting it fall to the bed. Too fast an acceleration can blow out her sensitivity and short-circuit climax, which in this scenario is a good thing. Natasha breaks out in sweat and all the tension drains from her with a mournful groan. He fucks her slowly with his fingers, feeling her flutter against the pressure, his other hand roaming her body in long strokes.

It’s humbling, and awe-inspiring. Her cheeks are red, hair a tangle, skin flushed with arousal, with the scrape of his stubble. She is absolutely open to him, limbs splayed where she’s lost track of them, her cunt unfolded bright rose and unearthly pretty. 

She shakes her head, punch-drunk, and squirms.

Bruce slowly withdraws, sliding the slickness back over her perineum, and delicately circling the furled muscle of her anus. She pauses, as if weighing his tacit proposal. She’s been happy to finger fuck him, panting excitedly in his ear, eyes darkening when they talked about strapping her up so she could properly plow him...but much like being on her back, this is something she’s up for but it won’t bring her off.

He trails his fingers slowly up her tailbone and she arches her back, stretching to snag the lube. Natasha pours it over his fingers like a sacrament. It drips from his hand to her flushed and glowing skin and he slips inside her with a single finger. 

Her moan resonates in his aching cock, but he’s always been aces at focusing on a higher purpose, and he can’t think of anything more worthwhile right now than driving her even closer to desperation. He coaxes, a slow twist.

Natasha rolls flat on her belly and rocks against him, thrusting up and back, and while her ridiculous strength is the reason she can do this with zero leverage, it’s artlessly wanton. She eases open and he adds a second finger, then a third. He kisses her shoulder blades, her spine, and she keens into the mattress. It’s heart stopping. He cups her asscheeks to reveal her full glorious array, plump and open and luscious, begging for his mouth.

She flutters around his tongue, soft and slick, and her back bows so her head rises up, her cry and gasp unfettered. Throaty. Needy. Wanting and wonderful, and he licks her, thrusts with his tongue, suckles until she collapses back onto her belly.

They’re both sweaty and shaky but he has one more surprise for her. It’s time.

~*~

Natasha has never felt this high and this grounded at the same time, drunk on sex, saturated with longing. Her muscles are wrung out from dancing so close over and over, her body a nexus of nerves tuned to entirely different channels of information than ever before, everything filtered through pleasure.

Bruce’s hands shake as he pulls a small roll of towel from the fucking Baccarat punch bowl, but his power trip game is on point, she can’t see what he’s doing as he leans over the bed to fiddle with the surge protector. She runs her fingers up his thighs, admiring how high the color is in his chest and his cheeks, like a marathon runner.

“We found the vacuum tubes in Howard’s hoard,” he says. “And I read about a conversion.”

Bruce’s voice is dipping into Hulk’s registers, scratchy and desperate, and she knows this is killing him too, that he’s so into the build and cessation and sensation of her pleasure that he’s got his own drugging space going on. His eyes are glassy like when he turns inward with the rope, but his attention is entirely on her.

He's brought her into that space with him, made her feel it from the inside. His cock is burgundy purple, straining with the same banked ecstasy that thrums through her, ready to catch.

The handle looks like a curling iron, but when he turns the dial on the casing, the low hum of current flows into the oddly-shaped pale green vacuum tube and makes it glow violet, uncanny and fascinating. He runs it just above his arm, and a tiny spark arcs to the skin.

She can’t hide the giggle, the burbling snort at the vision of Bruce making a complicated sex toy out of Howard Stark’s vintage electronics. It’s so beautifully ironic.

“Biology, physics and chemistry,” she chokes out. “Bring it.”

He does...and it’s gorgeous. He runs the spark up her inner thigh, a fizzy tingle, then under her knees, skating over her belly, hovering over her nipple. When it touches the glass is cool on her superheated skin, and the charge jolts her ever so slightly. She shudders and moans, joy with just a hint of pain like a citrus tang, and it’s extraordinary.

He kneels between her splayed legs, tracing her veins, lighting her up, and the giggle catches into gasps and hitching laughter, and suddenly she’s not sure she can contain herself inside her body anymore. This maddening zap, this electric delirium, his beautiful mad scientist hands soothing away the negligible sting. The body's demand for release is at such a pitch it's become unspecified desire--to punch, to cry, to come, to fly.

She sucks in a ragged breath and grabs his forearm, “Bruce.”

He stops.

“Fuck,” she says, unable to find any other words. She's a thrashing mess, she's so lit up her skin can taste his. She repeats it, a vehement statement and a benediction and a fervent oath, “ _Fuck_.”

He sits back on his haunches, and she curls her back up against the headboard, fingers still clenching his arm. She wraps an arm around his neck and drags him closer, into the space between her splayed legs. Just displacing the air, it feels like he’s touching her. He bends to kiss her neck, her sternum, down her belly until she grabs his hair and makes him meet her eyes.

~*~

The hesitation brings him sharply back to reality, even before she tells him in a hoarse whisper, “I could walk away right now, if I had to.”

“I know.” Bruce knows that the source of her seemingly effortless control is both will and ruthless practice. He can picture her dashing off on shaking legs, shoving the pleasure and arousal down, her face blank like a sociopath drowning kittens in a bucket. “You're the one letting me, not the other way around.”

She stretches an arm over her head, fingers finding purchase on the top edge of his headboard, “Something we do together.”

“Yeah.” He’s never wanted to take away her control, simply wanted to offer her something she’d want for herself enough to risk asking for.

“Bruce,” she says, teetering on the brink of the begging he’d never ask of her, but still very much telling him, “Make me come.”

He winds around her, giving her his body to brace against as well, bringing the wand back into play throbbing low. She guides it with fingers digging into his forearm, and builds to a point where there's a moment of near panic right before inevitability. She jerks up, locks her thighs around him, everything about her impossibly open. 

Bruce is hungry, and then awestruck as she starts to combust.

She plummets into orgasm like falling down a gorge into rapids, wracked and tossed in surging pleasure, broken apart in ecstasy, sopping wet and calling, and it goes on and on. His headboard creaks ominously. At one point she shoves the wand away but clings harder to him, and the fire keeps roaring through her.

‘You...” She draws in a shuddering breath, and hiccups so hard her ribs stand out. “You devious….bastard.” Her accent is showing like a trodden hem, worn and mangled.

“You’re not wrong.” He holds her loosely, searching for what to do next--she’s giving off a ton of signals, twitching and grasping and laughing, but just as there’s no walls right now there are also no cues. “I’m sorry--”

Lightning quick she rolls them over and takes him by the cock, stroking him without mercy until he’s right there with her, spurting and shaking and gasping.

Natasha wipes her hand on his sheets and flops down next to him, like she can rest now that they’re both flying high.

Bruce rises up on an unsteady elbow and surveys the scene. His sheets are half pulled off the bed and streaked like bloomed chocolate. His partner is a mess, skin blotched with high color like a spring bouquet. The air is heady with the tang of sex. He runs his hand up her thigh to softly pet her cunt, glide up her belly and chest to cup the back of her skull. Her eyes are shut, and he realizes the wetness on her face is not just sweat, but tears she’s wiping back into her hair with shaking hands.

“Oh, shit, Nat, hey…”

She opens her eyes and laughs at him, which would be more convincing if they didn’t also sound like sobs.

Bruce cradles her skull, thumb rubbing deep along the mastoid process, other hand stroking her lower back. She twines around him like a snake. Her heart thumps against the matted fur of his chest, his cock nestling in the damp crook of her thigh like coming home.

“I’m so--ow!” He jerks away from her pinching fingers, but there’s nowhere he can go. She’s shaking her head, admonishing him for trying to apologize even as she’s crying openly now, wrenching breaths still punctuated by chuckles coming deep from her belly, and it’s not like he doesn’t know that what’s happening here is catharsis. That’s why he feels responsible. He’s the one who smashed open this piggy bank of emotion, so he gets to clean up the broken pieces of pottery and remind himself that the coins aren’t his to keep.

He holds her until her skin cools and she begins to breathe normally, and then gently shakes her loose and pulls them both out of bed.

Rosy orange tendrils of dawn creep along the hallway with them. Nat watches him warm up the shower, beatific and placid, running her fingertips along his arms as he rinses them both off, trailing them up his flank as he bends to fill the tub.

She lets him guide her down into the water, answering his queries with a shake or a nod, an eloquent sigh, her face startlingly expressive and unfiltered, her head tilted curiously at him like she’s studying him anew.

He lets her soak while he strips the bed, gathers his thoughts, and pours her a shot from the fancy bottle of bourbon that came with the apartment. She looks drugged when he pulls her from the tub, but she rouses enough to follow him back to bed.

“I know you said you’re not up for talking,” he says as he turns back the hastily made covers. When pressed, she’d sighed and finally drawled, _rather not_ , and he’d left it at that until she had more time to rally. “But Nat, I need to know if you’re okay.”

She lays a hand on his neck and kisses him with brutal tenderness, knocks back the shot he’d left on the nightstand, and lightly slaps his cheek before dragging him into bed with her.

She’s asleep before her head hits the pillow, and Bruce presses himself against her and follows.

~*~

Natasha drifted off after breakfast, high on the endorphins, feeling like a piece of laundry beaten clean in a mountain stream and dried in a summer breeze. Her body had throbbed and tingled so hard afterward she couldn’t even string words together until she’d slept. She’d woken with a bone-deep satisfaction.

She’s given herself a few days for her brain chemistry to rebalance...but it hasn’t. She still feels euphoric, only now it’s less like a drug and more like flying through the air--good clean fun with the sharp edge of danger. Like when she learned she could trust her body to spin, to react, to catch and hit.

As if she’s just found the key to a cypher, understanding flooding through her like dreaming in a foreign language for the first time.

The way he watches her, head propped up to make a long thorough study, it makes her think he’s contemplating a whole new language as well.

~*~

Natasha wandered off after breakfast three days ago, and he’s seen her for practices, for meetings and dinners, but nothing more.

He hasn’t initiated anything more intimate and neither has she, but she’s sitting alone in the common area, feet drawn up and a mug in hand, and suddenly he hates the distance.

He hasn’t known what to say. After an experience like that can you really go back to casual fucking and creeping domestic canoodling? Maybe she can, and he’s the fucking idiot. Maybe it’s just him feeling hot and choked and needy about this, just him feeling the constant background tide of anxiety ebb when he sees her, hell, when he thinks about her.

Bruce considers turning away, leaving her to her tablet and her tea, but he doesn’t want this separation. Even if he’s not quite sure what he wants instead. He’d like to figure it out with her. Lunch. Maybe cookies. They need to talk.

She looks up when he steps into the room, a true smile lighting her up.

He opens his mouth and feels a hand brush his back. He knows it’s Steve by the way it’s quick and gone, like a warning, but it’s the grim line of Maria Hill’s mouth that shuts his own.

“We’ve located the scepter,” she says. “Or three potential locations, at least. Gear up.”

After the mission brief he follows her into the women’s locker area, wanting to talk before wheels up. It’s just them in the big room, built equitably with the men’s, so he should have expected she’d whip off her hoodie and shirt and unbuckle her belt, unconcerned, but he’s having a hard time starting this conversation in the face of her preparing for battle.

It’s not her nakedness that makes him blush, finally, but the sport briefs she pulls on exactly like the pair they broke the leg seam on days ago. Her knowing look is amused, but she doesn’t pause, donning the thermal under layers for winter weather, sliding into the new suit Tony had finished the day before, lacing her boots tight with surgeon's knots and tucking the loose ends under the tongues.

Bruce is fascinated that she’s put herself back together so smoothly, but isn’t buttoned up in the least. She pats herself down from head to toe, checking her weapons and tools, and it plugs into his brain like a striptease. The smirk she gives him tells him she knows it.

~*~

_I scare myself just thinking about you_

_I scare myself when I'm without you_

_I scare myself the moment that you're going_

_I scare myself when I let my thoughts run_

_And when they're running_

_I keep thinking of you_

_\-- **Thomas Dolby**_

~*~

Hulk hunkers down in the cockpit. Hulk is tired, and Hulk is sad. Nat talks on a tiny screen, but her voice only reminds them both why they don’t want to turn the bird around. Banner seethes furious in the back of Hulk’s head.

_It wasn’t hers to take._

What she took was one last chance for Hulk.

_She had no right._

She’d promised Hulk. Now they’re even. It’s over. Hulk flicks the screen off.

_She--_

Hulk roars at Banner until he shuts up too.


	11. Solo Projects

### Solo Projects

~*~

_See I just couldn't take no more_

_Of whipping fools and keeping score_

_I just thought, "well fuck it, man,"_

_I'm gonna pack my soul and scram_

_\-- **Iggy Pop**_

~*~

“We can’t keep saving their seats,” Rhodes tapes the ice pack around his knee in a trice. He’s practiced the firm but diplomatic tone just as much, but seeing as Maximoff isn’t here and he’s still using it, Natasha tenses for what might come next. “We need to stop training around heavy hitters we don’t have.”

“Colonel,” Steve stops slathering lineament, shaking his head. Unlike his tweaked elbow, the absence of Thor and Bruce are a sore spot he’s not willing to confront yet. “I appreciate your perspective--”

“Then let him speak.” Tony is nearly submerged in the whirlpool, just another step in a now elaborate program of aftercare when he does join them for training. It’s mostly been an excuse to spend time with the team and coax Steve away from a punishing schedule, but tensions have been mounting for months.

It was all fun and games until Pepper insisted on therapy. Now Rhodes is making the team confront their issues as well, hopefully with more success.

“You’re right,” Natasha slices through the tension just to breathe again. “We can’t afford to keep ignoring our deficits, especially with the gathering backlash. There aren’t going to be quick fixes, so we need to get to work.” It’s been months with no word, and that's unlikely to change. Her throat is tight, but she shoves that feeling into the same box as the twinge in her shoulder and hip from being hauled into the air: the cost of doing business. “We need to look at the team we have in hand right now. More military training. Less life experience. A lot of flyers and a couple loose cannons.”

Rhodes catches her eye, and she nods, knowing she’s stepping into the role of interface both within the team and without, the one who can translate and deescalate the hard conversations.

“It’s going to take commitment and work.” Steve squares his shoulders as if adjusting to more weight.

“Team building exercise,” Natasha smirks, but only Rhodes returns the smile. “Fun for the whole family.”

“Might be for the best that they’re on sabbatical,” Stark wrings out a hand towel and lays it across his eyes as he sinks back down. “Pep got early word: Ross has been nominated for Secretary of State.”

~*~

Bruce washed ashore--physically and consciously--in Chennai. He stumbled from the surf like a hungover tourist, clutching his bedraggled flex-pants, and collapsed on the hotel beach. Eventually, the sunburn goaded him back up.

It was the only sensation in his body that wasn’t exhaustion. The seam on his waistband gave away to his pruned and shaking fingers, bleached from sun and sea, but the waterproof pouch was thankfully intact. The currency and credit kitted him out easily, and afforded him the massive amounts of food it took to even begin to feel human again.

He suspects Hulk was swimming for a very long time.

His stomach growls loudly as he orders a large amount of Korean barbeque to help tide him over on the train ride. He’s got a backpack full of snacks and a colleague in Kolkata to take him out to breakfast when he arrives, but the trip takes over a day, and he’s still ravenous. 

There’s a television on in the corner by the bar, muted and captioned in Tamil. From the date on the headline crawl, he’s been gone for almost a year. The footage is of New York and The Hague, interspersed with Johannesburg.

“Clips,” Bruce mutters sotto voce, “no one says footage anymore.” Steve Rogers outside the UN building, tight around the eyes. Tony inside, backgrounded by world flags, in his civilian armor of a three piece suit.

Natasha stands next to each of them in their clips, to the right of Tony, to the left of Steve, the briefest flash of her face imprinting on Bruce’s mind. She’s diplomatic and determined. She’s suited up like Pepper. She’s lost weight, the bone structure of her face sharpened like a weapon.

The king of little landlocked Wakanda gives a sound bite full of gravitas, then the story changes.

His food arrives, and he tears his eyes away from the screen.

Months later in Kolkata he reads a breezy piece in _The Telegraph_ about the Accords, which includes a deftly incendiary quote from Secretary of State Thunderbolt Ross, about the free will of WMDs.

Bruce thinks that if Hulk wanted to leave their problems behind, he should’ve aimed for space.

~*~

Pepper swings the refrigerator door wide and pulls out the remains of the delivery from too many hours before. They’ve spent the whole night in a deep dive on all the UN Committee members, their staff, and their nation’s stakeholders. By far the most problematic will be the American delegation. “I’d make a strange bedfellows joke, but it seems in poor taste.”

Strange is hardly the word for the familiar names popping up around this issue like wolves circling. Former Hammertech lawyers, desert oil war profiteers… and Akesotech.

The last time Natasha contacted Bernice she’d been at a big convention in Vegas, playing the friendly scientist who could speak plainly and knew how to work a dog and pony show. They’d talked about new contractors and spec work, and Bernice had been troubled, but made a case for sticking it out and casting a wider net. It’s time to check in again.

Natasha catches Maria's eye over that file, says aloud, “Isn't this the company Helen's grad advisor fled to? The one with the ethics investigation?”

“Oh, you mean the human testing and the genetic manipulation,” Maria loads the coffee filter into the machine with a hard click, “and the strong whiff of biological weapons?”

“Plunderbolt.” Pepper humphs, “These guys always have a type, don't they?”

It’s not like Natasha didn’t know Ross’s pathology; she’d studied the whole of Bruce’s file even before seeing the general go off the rails in Harlem. The addition of details she could have guessed shouldn’t feel so poisonous. She’s handled far worse people, with less on the line. She shakes her head once, decisive. “While highly unpleasant, Chunderbolt Ross's fetish for dehumanizing monstrosity is less of a concern than the cadre of unsavory mercenaries and contractors who've leveraged to bring him to the table in the first place.” 

“Unless he turns out to _also_ be a useful idiot for Hydra.” Maria jabs her fork into the takeout container and twists it. She’s staring at the coffeemaker as if to intimidate it into brewing faster. “They'd certainly like to bring gods and monsters to heel.”

Pepper looks sharp, “You think that’s likely?”

“I think he’s only ever serving his own grandiosity,” Natasha says, “If he advances their agenda to hobble powered individuals, it’s an accidental freebie.”

“Blunderbolt,” Maria mutters.

“Dunderbolt.” Pepper adds, poking the microwave buttons.

Natasha flicks through the documentation they’ll strategically seed to targeted Committee member staff. “Point being, he’s the last person who should get to write the superhero field manual.” Steve dismisses it as _placating the public_ , as if they could continue to operate without any guidelines and not shred what’s left of that good will. Where did she go wrong in life that she’s tag-teaming with Tony Stark to try to teach anyone diplomacy and tactical subtlety?

“Teddy thinks he’s the perfect devil’s advocate because he was eyeballs deep in gamma and biological weapon research for decades.” Maria pours her mug halfway through the brew, drips hissing on the hot plate even after she slides the pot home.

“He mistakes obsessive perseveration for objective experience.” Natasha has always been able to ration her emotional investment. Now she can’t even rationalize it. She needs to focus on this situation, determine where to apply the pressure and friction, where and how to grease the skids...but even before this she’s sat in staid meetings listening to suits talking about her friends--her chosen family--as if they were pieces of unclaimed artillery, and she’s wanted to burn it all down. Right now, she’ll settle for razing and salting Ross like he was Carthage.

“I think we’re all personally invested.” Pepper lays her hand on Natasha’s. The display keeps rolling from the momentum.

That’s the downside of settling on a persona to truly live in. It splices into your reptilian brain and your limbic system. You end up taking stands and reacting from the gut instead of the neocortex. Ross is too entrenched, and there are higher priorities. She can swat her shoe at him like the radiation-resistant cockroach he is, or she can weaken and attack his arguments. There’s no shortage of cockroaches on earth, after all, but if everyone agrees they’re vermin and helps clean the kitchen, things can work out okay.

There’s a kid in Queens Tony thinks she doesn’t know about, a high school student who likes photography and science and punches way over his weight class. Natasha thinks about a kid like that in the Raft. Or dead when the world needs him. They have to find a middle path.

She makes herself reach for the shrimp toast, soggy with plum sauce, and fix her blood sugar, fix her emotions, fix her eyes back on the prize.

~*~

India feels surprisingly familiar. Bruce’s memories were of aches in his belly and his neck, hunger and paranoia relieved only by work...but in retrospect he sees he’d found some measure of happiness there. Ultimately, the ubiquity of tech means too many people with eyes on the internet, too familiar with his recent gigs. He feels exposed, and he’s unready to resurface.

He needs to go somewhere open. Safe. Away. A former colleague puts out a discrete inquiry for medical expertise and manual labor in the outskirts of Rio, so he splurges on a well-made set of identity papers. It’s almost a lark, like the last few years have been a dreamy interlude, the money he’d squirreled away just some kind of magic fairy dust to ease his travels. _I had a dream where I was an Avenger_ , he thinks, _and all I got was the means to buy t-shirts instead of having to steal them from laundry lines_.

The last time he traveled as a passenger on a cargo freighter they’d let him work along with the crew, but regulations have tightened. Once he reads all the books onboard he’s left literally shiftless.

He lasts about a day until he finally gives in, sits his ass down on the deck in the shade with his face pointed into the wind coming off the sea, and focuses on his breathing.

Bruce hates it.

Three breathes in, he balks, shoots to his feet, and makes himself go to the tiny cramped weight room and shove heavy things around until his temples no longer ache. He comes back, and makes it almost to seven.

So it’s gotten that bad. 

It takes thirty-nine days for the ship to make it from Mumbai to Port Santos. 

~*~

 _World Piece, Pvt., Ltd._ is calling Natasha.

Tony rarely comes to the Facility upstate anymore, but is a frenetic texter, a loquacious font of upgrades, gossip, midnight missives from deep in the latest rabbit hole of research, and brainstorming strategy for the Accords special council. He calls other people to pester and chat, but he texts Natasha. He trusts her to read between the lines.

Natasha keeps her eyes on Maximoff as she brings the phone up; the woman has a tendency to drift along with her concentration. “What do you want Tony?”

“Come down this weekend, Romanoff,” he says without preamble.

She winces as Wanda narrowly misses a power line.

“Take me off of speakerphone. And no. I can’t. Training.” She could. She doesn’t want to.

“C’mon, it’ll be fun. I’ll get you a hall pass.”

“Stark, go away. Really, I can’t.” She hangs up on him. She has no interest in going back to the tower.

Pepper calls her an hour later, and says, “I’ll make it worth your time.”

Natasha relents. “I don’t need to be bribed, Pepper.”

There’s a long pause, and then Pepper’s voice is so gentle Natasha wants to punch something. “We’re going to pack up Bruce’s things, put them in storage. And Tony...he’ll never do it alone, and I feel like an intruder, and he thought maybe…”

“You could burn it all,” Natasha swallows hard, pushing down the tide of hurt and longing and anger swelling in her throat. “Bruce wouldn’t care.”

“Maybe so,” Pepper sighs, “but we do. Don't we.” It's not a question.

Natasha’s only answer is to end the call, but she shows up that weekend at Bruce’s apartment in the tower.

The living room was easily sterilized; Bruce had gathered few personal belongings, books and a tablet, a ridiculously soft cashmere throw that had been a gift from Pepper. The scatter of trinkets she suspected he chose solely to disrupt the design aesthetic have been collected into a couple boxes, re-establishing the warm palette and clean lines.

The kitchen smells of lemon cleaner, the pottery Hulk head empty of the presumably dead basil. Like scrubbing out an abrasion, Natasha forces herself down the hall.

Tony sits on the floor beside a pulled out drawer, with a highball glass for company, like a cliche of himself. He offers up the bottle of bourbon from the kitchen, the one Bruce had described as _the most tone deaf housewarming gift ever_. She snags his glass instead and sits down next to him.

“God, he owned a lot of ugly shirts,” Tony picks one up that says _Particle Physics Gives Me a Hadron!_

She takes a healthy slug of bourbon. “That one came from Clint.”

He rifles through a remarkable amount of novelty shirts, Bruce’s wardrobe for running and sleeping. Clint must have let him know when the sales were.

“Save those,” she says. “It’d serve him right.” She rises up on her knees to snag a box off the bed.

He turns out another drawer while she packs socks and pajamas and boxer briefs, the funereal intimacy making her skin crawl. They don’t talk about why she’s here, why she came. Why he asked for her company, and then asked Pepper to ask when she said no.

The tape gun screeches and she steps back, tossing it onto the stripped bed and crossing her arms. “Seriously, why now?”

“He’s not coming back.” Tony slides out the final drawer. “I wanted to keep a light on for him, in case he did. But with Ross’s confirmation and the shifting climate, me retiring...it didn’t feel right anymore.”

“To think he'd be safe if he did.”

“To keep pretending he would.”

That sits heavy in her belly, and she sorts through the hurt along with the last pile of clothes. Tony boxes books, and bins the impersonal detritus from the nightstand. There are no photos or mementos. Bruce even chose the art from the Stark collection. His roots were shallow by design.

“You could have had someone do this. I know Pepper’s staff are efficient and discreet.”

“It didn’t seem fair to make someone deal with all the weird kinky sex stuff.” He smirks at her, but there’s no amusement to it.

She waits him out. He comes back around the bed and takes his glass, finishes the drink.

“I wanted it to be people who cared about him. He deserved to have some thought put into what happened to the life he left behind.”

“If it mattered to him, he would have come back to deal with it.”

Tony’s eyebrows shoot sky high.

She hates herself for giving in to the bitterness, here with her hands buried in Bruce’s things, surrounded by reminders of him, of those last few weeks before things went so very, very wrong. She made her choice, and even if she didn't know the price she'd pay, she doesn't regret it…but she's weary of pretending she’d been unaffected, that she hadn’t lost something. That she doesn't have a ragged clambake sweater in her closet at the Facility, folded atop a box of vibrators and sensation tools, skeins of soft rope, and a padded roll of gorgeous pale green cathode tubes.

“Well, you know Banner,” Tony lets his own hurt leak out and she’s embarrassed for them both, “he’s always been a flight risk.”

She scoops up the last of the clothes and dumps them into a box, grabbing the tape gun, then she stutters to a stop when she recognizes the chewed ends of string. She sinks down onto the bed, sighing, “Bruce, you utter shit.”

Tony has the grace to mutter something about ice and head down the hall. She balls her fists in the soft cotton of her old hoodie. Bruce had tucked it at the back of a bottom drawer where she would never have looked before he left, could never have reclaimed it on a chilly morning and walked it out the door. The one sentimental memento in the whole place.

When she joins Tony in the empty kitchen she’s dry-eyed, but she lets him fill another glass for her. These must be from the penthouse. They aren’t the ones Bruce kept in the cupboard.

“I thought Pepper would be here,” she says between fortifying sips. 

Tony looks at the ice in his glass like like he’s starving, but he doesn’t refill it. “This retiring thing,” he says, “it’s for real. I’m selling the tower. Maybe. I don’t know.”

“That seems drastic,” she says, as if they haven’t been poised at the brink of drastic for ages. It’s bound to make any of them blow something up just to end the anticipation.

“She moved back to Malibu,” Tony sets the glass down and wipes his face with one hand, from cheekbones to chin. “Officially, not just as a second coast.”

That Pepper hadn’t updated Natasha speaks to both the newness of the decision, and the fluidity of her complicated relationship with Tony Stark. Explains, too, Steve’s new obsession with marathons at dusk.

“I even hired a therapist,” Tony picks up the glass to shake an ice cube free, racking it around his mouth but refraining from chewing it outright. “Interviewed, called references, checked out her writings, read a ton of Cochrane reviews on cognitive behavioral therapies...ran out of things I could do instead of taking to her.”

“So,” she asks, “did it take?”

“Therapy?”

She sips and waits, picturing what an absurdist hell sitting in a room talking about her feelings would be.

“She wanted us to all go, Steve, Pep, and I. Working through our alternate lifestyle and communication challenges with a well-meaning MFT, I mean, where would we start? Steve’s friendship with my dad a lifetime ago? His PTSD? Mine? _Pepper’s_? Or would we have just chatted about Steve’s decidedly not family friendly sexual sensibilities, or the things Pepper can do with a dil--”

“Please,” Natasha holds up a hand, “I have to be able to look him in the eye. I can’t know that Captain America is into pegging.”

“Well,” Stark says philosophically, “there’s knowing and there’s _knowing_.”

“And then there's your arm brushing against a mercurial empath while reaching for toast.” She takes another sip.

Tony winces and gives in to chewing the ice. “Ambiguity isn’t his strength, you know, which is part of the appeal, that towering, sweeping sense of certainty, you just want to tilt at the windmill. It makes him impossible to argue with. and impossible not to want to fuck with him.”

She lets her mouth curve up. “I’m familiar with the phenomena.”

She’d meant Steve, but the way Tony cocks his head and studies her makes Natasha think he’s reading between her lines now. His quip about the kinky toys, and the way he’d pressed his hand to the stack of Bruce’s stupid t-shirts. She’s suddenly unsure how much Bruce had confided--their friendship from the first had been deep but strangely shaped. She’d assumed the details had been obscure, for all that Bruce rarely bothered to hide her colorful handiwork.

“I’ve been thinking a lot about memory,” Tony says. “Where it lives, physically. Therapy is about feelings and memories, but feelings are subjective, and memories are faulty. How do you ever know if you’re being straight with yourself? How do we mere mortals achieve any certainly? When you don’t have Steve’s self-righteous conviction that there’s one right thing to do; when you’re not throwing on a hairshirt and hitting the road like Bruce? How do you know you’re choosing a good path, and not just a champion bullshitter?”

“Especially if you’re a champion bullshitter?” She gives Tony her professional sultry smile and says, “You let me know when you figure something out.”

Tony accompanies her to the elevator, fiddling with his phone. The ache under her breastbone feels like heartburn, but it’s swallowing a truth. Truth is subjective, but there are facts out there that deserve to be investigated and spoken out loud. It’s time she makes that happen.

“You never said if you actually met with the therapist.”

He taps his phone on the wall as the door opens. “Turns out, she didn’t take my insurance.”

~*~

Bruce had expected to be doling out first aid and medications, but the clinic in Rocinha has a multinational multidisciplinary team, and a squad of community health agents born and raised in the favela to do the footwork. His contact introduces him with a wink as _Joao Faztudo_ , and the director puts him to work refurbishing the website and the information systems, setting up scheduling and inventory control, and fixing equipment from printers to autoclaves.

He’s doing needed work. They’re using him wisely as a force multiplier instead of sending him out trying to elicit TB med compliance in a language he’s still knocking the rust off of. He tells himself these things when he can’t sleep at night, strung tight with frustration, palms itching to push away even this pseudonymous respectability, to sink further into the festering wounds of humanity, to bury himself in misery and expend himself in trying to staunch it. 

The rules were etched into his nervous system years ago; don’t get too close, don’t get made, don’t get played, don’t...care. Don’t care too much. He breaks all of those rules. He wheedles his way onto a team checking on elderly diabetics. He makes friends.

He jerks awake yet another night, dry mouthed and soaked in cold sweat, skin and bones aching as Hulk fights his way free.

Bruce rolls to his knees, Hulk roaring in his head.

He recites forty nine digits of e, rattling them off like seven telephone numbers. He shoves his pillow away to bend down into child’s pose, grinding his forehead into the sleeping mat as he lists the elements, biting out their names as he goes across the periodic table like eating rows of corn. He claws at the rough cotton blanket, trying to twist it around his wrists to have something to hold on to. To hold onto him.

He throws back his head, reaching, reaching, so close, reaching for a solid point to focus on.

_Don’t turn green._

The image hits him like a shock, her mouth open in ecstasy, in sorrow, in expectation.

Hulk howls louder in his head, hurt and angry and homesick. _Homesick_. Bruce has work and acquaintances, slapping a bandaid on the wound, but Hulk...

Bruce feels the skin across his shoulder blades stretch. Oh god. He can’t...he shakes free of the blanket and grabs his own wrists, fingers digging, and be begs, promises, swears that if Hulk will stay down, Bruce will find a way, a time, a place, to let him free.

It’s a slow agony, but Hulk sinks back down, and Bruce collapses after him. He scrubs his face, trying to keep his gasps from shaking into sobs, snot and tears and sweat mingling in an ugly, slimy mix.

He crosses the border into Bolivia the next morning.

~*~

Steve is eating pudding in the dark.

Natasha is exhausted and her shoulder aches. Her practice uniform reeks from sweat and the marsh muck they tore through earlier practicing aerial maneuvers. She wants a shower, a decent night’s sleep, but she can’t let Rogers pout by himself in the cafeteria, if only because she knows it would be easier to keep walking.

She leaves the lights off and takes a chair. He lays down his spoon and looks at her, eyebrow arching.

She steals a bite of pudding, wincing at the pop of tapioca beads between her teeth. “This is revolting.”

“And you stink.” He flashes her that megawatt smile. It’s genuine, before it flickers out.

They had hoped deploying Steve in his fancy suit and patriotic disapproval would sway the Foreign Relations Committee to soften their recommendations. Not a lot of hope, worth a try, but it doesn’t surprise her that it didn’t go well. It does surprise her that Steve had inspired her to hope at all. She hides her disappointment and changes the subject. “How’s Wanda’s citizenship coming along?”

“How were maneuvers?”

“That good?”

He shrugs and eats more pudding. Except for the suit, it’s like many nights when he’s haunting his office or the training room, running the perimeter of their acreage. He’s anywhere but his quarters.

Tony hasn’t been up to the facility in months, Pepper stopped coming some time after, and Barnes is still in the wind. Steve smiles at breakfast, rallies the troops, does his duty, but he rarely cracks jokes anymore, doesn’t lay on the floor with a whole pizza box open on his belly, jeering happily at the television. He’s more Captain than Steve, and Natasha mourns that loss.

“Seriously,” his concern and protectiveness are the fire that drives him, and threatens to burn him alive, “is everyone still in one piece?”

“They’re fine. Bruised and filthy. A little embarrassed. I found out Sam has a dart board with my face on it because he’s letting Wanda borrow it tonight.”

Steve scrapes the pudding cup, reflexively offering her the last bite.

“Don’t threaten me with your vile tapioca, Steve.”

He launches it into the trash in the corner, and licks the spoon clean. “Should have been you there today,” he says, “Talking to politicians, wheeling and dealing.”

“This was a show of good faith.”

“Not sure I have any left.”

Natasha gives in to impulse and lays her hand on his arm, flinching at the heat of his metabolism. It’s been a long time since she’s touched anyone with affection. Loss and loneliness flicker over his face and she squeezes, reaching out across the isolation.

He lays his hand over hers. “You should get some rest.”

“Actually...I need a few weeks away,” she says, “before the talks in Europe.”

“Tough time to spare you,” he says, and leans in to knock her shoulder. “But I understand needing to get some things in order before a big confrontation.”

“I’m not off the roster. If you need anything, call.” 

“Take all the time you need, Nat. No one deserves it more than you.” He looks at her shrewdly, a little maudlin and romantic about the edges.

Heat flares in her cheeks, tightens her chest. The denial rises up in her throat--she’s not on some quixotic pilgrimage--but to say she’s fine would be a lie, and she’s trying hard not to lie to her friends. She needs to check her lines and resources, touch base with those few dangling threads of missions, check in on the missed and messed up opportunities. Letting him think she’s off for a little discrete R & R is close enough to the truth...like him moping here in the dark is just about a midnight snack.

She narrows her eyes at him and says, “Just call me,” and punches his shoulder on her way out.

~*~

“It’s retirement, Nat, I don’t have to have an opinion anymore about this shit.”

“But you do.”

Clint lets out a sharp sigh, jostling Nate in the chest carrier. The baby keeps staring agog at the lights and people, and Clint tries to change the topic by pointing out the Dairy Queen. “They’ve got Orange Julius, fuck, this place is a time capsule. I feel sick just looking at the logo. Barney had a way of charming bored mall employees, we were supposed to be talking up the circus, advertising in the town, but we spent most of the time in the food court. My teen growth spurt was fueled by hot dogs and cinnamon buns.”

He strokes his son’s peach fuzzy head with his thumb, as if protecting him from the very prospect of having to cadge orange juice and egg white smoothies to survive.

Natasha slows, dragging him back to the topic. “You won’t be exempt just because you quit the gig.”

Clint shrugs and plucks a pair of sunglasses from a cart, slipping them onto Nate’s tiny face. He tries to crane around to see the effect. “Do they make him look cool, or just like he has a hangover?”

“Like he’s recovering from cataract surgery. It’s the lack of hair.”

“Ignore her, Nate. Baldness can be powerful.” Clint slips the glasses back onto the stand and checks the overlord strapped to his wrist. “Thousand steps left; we need to make another pass.”

“I can’t believe we’re mall walking,” Natasha says, but she’s oddly charmed. It feels very removed from the wearisome grind of building and training a team, trying to figure out what Ross is aiming at with his petty machinations. They circle the top tier again, and she’s reminded of the emptiness of that mall in Minnesota, cheap real estate rotting at the edge of sprawl, so easily repurposed for evil. Another sign of changing times. Who actually shops in person anymore, even out here in this outpost of Americana?

When they pass the pretzel stand, Clint pauses and rearranges the carrier so a sleepy Nate is tucked facing his body. He curves a hand around his son’s back, cradling his whole rib cage with spread fingers gnarled and still calloused. If Clint were anyone else she’d look away from the tenderness, but she has earned this entree into the workings of love. Even when it stings.

“Nat,” Clint starts, “I know you want some sort of absolution…”

For a man who’s emotional aim is as deadly as his draw, it’s a remarkably clumsy feint. Which means he’s being a dick on purpose, retribution for hassling him about a life he swears he’s happy to have given up.

“Not absolution. Accountability.” There are consequences for every action. An act of heroism can turn into an act of terror. A push in the right direction can also be a shove off a cliff...and now she’s just mocking herself. “Balancing extraordinary measures with oversight, power with responsibility.”

Clint glances at his wrist and takes the nearest stairs down to an exit. “Bureaucracy is not going to protect us, you know. All the process, and sunlight-as-a-disinfectant, and cover-your-ass paperwork in the world isn’t going to save you from bastards like Ross acting in bad faith.”

Natasha follows him out the first set of doors, “Not participating means you get no say at all.”

He shoves through the outside doors and stalks to the parking aisle where his nondescript sedan hides in a sea of similar vehicles.

“We have leverage, Clint. But only if we use it.”

“You think this is going to work for all of us like you bluffing the Senate committee? What was done to you was evil, from the get-go right on through HYDRA playing us all for chumps. You were used, and betrayed. But you were also an investment. You’ve never been disposable, Natasha. I always have been--no, lemme talk.”

She bites the inside of her cheek and scans the parking lot. Habit, security, comfort. Clint waits until she looks back to him. In the sunlight she can distinguish the grey in his sideburns from the dirty blond, the countless scars surfacing white in his tanning skin, the crookedness of his bared teeth.

“They _don’t need us_ , Nat, that’s the point. They only need people _like us_. And don’t think they won’t go through as many people as necessary until they get the compliant tools they’re looking for.” Clint shakes his head and digs for his keys. “I’m sticking with the pasture and not risking the glue factory.”

Natasha watches him slip the baby into the car seat and fasten the straps and buckles. When he straightens she asks him, “So that grand speech you gave to Wanda in Sokovia?”

Clint mutters and grumps his way to the driver side, “A Witch Called Wanda.” He starts the car but doesn’t put it into gear until Natasha’s buckled. “I have a soft spot for sweet faced sociopaths. Sue me.”

Natasha lets her head loll back as he drives. “I’m pushing Maximoff harder than I should, she’s still brittle and grieving, but we need to get through this training phase as quickly as possible,” she sighs. “Steve knows how to lead a well-oiled machine, but not how to build one. He’s full of inspiration but is shit at risk assessment. Colonel Rhodes spends his days tripping over everyone’s gaps in education and explaining basic concepts to half of the team--different halves, but all the time. Sam’s smoothing everything over with his bedrock faith in Steve. Vision is still...a mysterious force with boundary issues. We don’t have any aces in our back pocket.”

“You miss Banner.”

“I miss you,” she emphasizes. That both are true, achingly so, is beside the point.

“Nat--”

“Fuck, I miss _Stark_. He could push Steve in a way I can’t. My team experience is limited. Stark’s a dick, but he lead a multinational company. They...balanced each other out, and now without Bruce or Thor around to provide alternate perspectives, we’re out there running actual missions with a team that some days can’t find it’s ass with both hands and a flashlight.”

“And a dirty cartoon.”

“People are going to get hurt. So, no. Accountability has nothing to do with my personal fucking penance.”

Clint takes advantage of the red light to give her a slow clap.

She flips him the bird. The deep, parasitic itch of unease begs to be scratched but there’s relief in voicing her worries to the one asshole who might understand.

At least the one who’s still taking her calls.

She fiddles with the door lock, voices the final worry. “There’s a sub-committee bringing charges up against Bruce,” she says. “Or at least that’s the threat. Use the destruction in Johannesburg to force our hand, shift control of the Avengers to the Security Council at best, put us under the Department of Defense at worst. It had died down for awhile, but Ross is stirring it back up. He’s subpoenaed the files on Thor’s initial visit in New Mexico.”

“Land of Enchantment,” Clint taps his finger on the steering wheel, then starts the car. “All of us could be subject to charges at any time,” he says, but for the first time there’s unease under the irritation. 

“I think that’s the point. Throw Bruce to the wolves since he won’t come around to defend himself, or protect the rest of us, or agree to oversight. It’s all talk now, but it’s loud.”

~*~

Bernice’s house is a modest stucco affair, and the straight grid of her older suburb makes the sight lines too easy. Natasha is relieved to find no evidence of manned surveillance, but still reaches out as discreetly as possible, catching Bernice by chance at the grocery store and arranging a meet-up.

She’s taking to espionage like a frog to water, cultivating acquaintances outside of work to obscure exactly this kind of contact, a round of book clubs and get-togethers, stitch and bitch and adult softball league, and she folds Natasha into karaoke on Thursday night, introducing her as the daughter of an old college roommate.

The music and laughter confound eavesdropping, and Natasha only has to sing once. The burgers are excellent. 

Bernice chats in the parking lot while Natasha smiles along, long goodbyes that reassure Nat that for all the precautions and hardened demeanor, the woman’s heart is fundamentally unchanged. These aren’t just camouflage and white noise, but friendships. In Nat’s rental car after, the debrief is long, thorough, and distressing. Aside from networking with the mercenary tactical ops crowd, Akesotech is making strides in gene stripping and editing that would hold immense promise for treating congenital issues.

“The problem,” Bernice lets out a ragged sigh reminiscent of before her lungs had healed, “is that doctors and humanitarians have shallow pockets, while governments and paramilitaries, even corporate entities, are willing to pay big money for tools and weapons their competitors don’t have.”

Natasha thinks of the paper Bruce had been asked about, a year and a half ago now, how Dr. Ross’s method of identifying alleles might be adapted to humans. “Could this be used for any mutation?”

“Theoretically yes. In practice…” she chews on her lip, staring out into the night, “I made a very small edit on myself, at significant risk. Recovery was...often unpleasant. Larger edits with more system-wide effects, the survival rate is, frankly, shitty.”

“Some might consider that a small price to pay to eliminate the mutant gene.”

“Eliminate?” Bernice spits the word. “Why eliminate when you can be the hand that giveth and that taketh away?”

Natasha can’t stop the shiver that runs up her spine and restacks her vertebrae. 


	12. Diss Tracks

### Diss Tracks

~*~

_Ask yourself can you even deliver_

_What she demands of you?_

_Or do you want revenge?_

_\-- **Pet Shop Boys**_

~*~

Twenty minutes outside of Cobija, heading away from Brazil and deeper into Bolivia, Natasha swings the motorbike around and idles at the edge of the road. She crouches to inspect a series of parallel grooves the width of truck tires, overlaid so the roadbed looks churned. She’s stalling, so close to her target...well, not _only_ stalling.

The tire size grooves are in fact fist imprints, punched into equatorially hot asphalt like it was cookie dough.

Natasha recognizes the aftermath of a tantrum, expended midway between town and the house she’s hoping to find before the afternoon rains hit. Water pools in the deepest knuckle impressions, hosting a couple tiny green frogs with golden eyes stacked one atop the other, mating.

She feels like all she’s made of at this point is brutal irony and restraint. She gets back on the motorbike and takes the next turnoff, a dirt track winding away from cleared fields and into scrubby palms and underbrush.

She has a plan for bringing Bruce back. She expects to fail.

To be honest she wants to, despite the effort and expense to track him down and keep everyone off her tail in the process. Sinking back into solitary habits, polishing skills that had gone rusty after she’d stepped into the public eye, has been soothing. She’s been neck deep in Security Council negotiations, fielding a team still in desperate need of training, and wrangling the dysfunctional dyad of Tony and Steve.

Now Tony's trying to program his way through the trickier parts of therapy, and even the Maximoff girl has been talking to a SHIELD-trained counselor Maria recommended. Natasha encourages this, even as she evades it herself. Instead, she’s tooling through the backwoods of Bolivia to have difficult conversations with a many-degreed genius who’s entirely unqualified to offer any therapeutic insight. She doesn’t expect a warm reception.

She most certainly doesn’t expect Hulk, leaning back on the grassy slope leading up to a tiny house, watching her arrive along with the darkening clouds. It's not a great start that Bruce is not at home to her, literally.

She gets off the motorbike and approaches slowly, isolated rain drops thudding in the yard.

Hulk flicks olive green eyes toward the house, and draws in a deep breath as the wind brings the smell of storm.

Natasha parks under the scrap of awning. 

He wears the pants Stark designed, and so despite the evidence of lost temper out on the road, it’s clear the transformations have been voluntary.

Rain sweeps down, taking the ambient temperature with it. Hulk stands and stretches, face turned up to meet the shower. Natasha sees that she shares the dry strip under the awning with a towel and a worn pair of cargos, and so she waits as Hulk takes in the rainstorm.

She thinks he was never cut out to stay in Manhattan, not all of him. The peace of it affects her, makes her eyes burn, the sheer absurdity of having never thought that Hulk didn’t just want for an outlet for violence or meaningful work, but harbored an unmet thirst for beauty. Even her own training had carefully included that.

By the time he turns and walks up to the awning, her face is wet, and the first thing she says to him is, “I’m sorry.”

Hulk jerks his head up in a sharp nod and prods her shoulder with one finger, “You pushed.” 

“Yes,” Natasha keeps her feet, “I did.”

“Fight dirty.”

She's incredulous, but she's not here to debate the idiocy of gentlemanly rules of combat. She wipes her cheeks, exchanging tears for a smirk, “Always have.”

Hulk brings a hand up and looks down into his open palm. His eyes narrow with thought, and flick up to look at her from under heavy brows.

Natasha slowly brings her own hand up.

“Said no tricks. No mocking and no tricks.” He sniffs, short and sharp, still holding her gaze. “Pushed anyway.” 

She blinks, a rising tide in her head, and keeps steady.

He grunts, almost a laugh. “We’re even.”

“I'm glad.” She waits a long beat and then asks, “Do I get to talk to Bruce?”

“Ha!” Hulk's smile quickly fades into a soft pout, and he exhales sharply through his nose. “Missed you,” he says, scratching across his palm with a rasp like a file on leather, setting off his own metamorphosis.

She's always interpreted the big guy's words like spare poetry, visceral and cunningly ambiguous. It occurs to her that Hulk had led with the deal she made with Bruce, the one she broke to keep her word to Hulk. Dragging his nails across his own skin, like a nib across paper, he released her from one promise and left her to salvage the other.

Natasha gathers the clothes and towel.

When Bruce pushes back up from the grass, sopping wet, she can see the pants are worn and sun-faded even when unstretched. He skins them off and takes the offered towel, then the shorts. He doesn’t speak, simply holds the door open behind him. She follows.

The tiny wooden house holds plain wooden furniture, three mismatched chairs and two tables, the bigger one crowded with a portable gas burner and kitchen implements and supplies, jerrycans of water lined up underneath. A small dented refrigerator chugs in the corner. The smaller table hosts a stack of handwritten logbooks and a thick tablet in a shock case. Sparse laundry dries on lines stretched between the rafters, and the only bedding on the plain slat bed is a thin cotton quilt and a sleeping bag, draped in mosquito netting.

Bruce gestures for her to sit at the desk, excavating two Pacema darks from the fridge.

“Took you longer than I expected,” he says, shutting the door with deliberate delicacy. His back is still to her.

“Were you waiting?” 

His shoulders tense, but he takes a deep breath and his face is implacable when he turns and hands her the beer as he sits.

“No,” he says mildly. “Holding my breath, maybe.”

There’s no denying the sting. Now she waits, but maybe Hulk has said both their pieces. She’s happy to see evidence of enhanced connection, and wishes there were some delicate way she could ask about it. “Well, I guess you can breathe now.”

He lets the moment go stale, watching her.

The beer is chilled but not nearly bitter enough. She’d look away, but that feels like cheating. He’s thinned out, the way he does in hot climes, the muscles in his forearms defined, the tendons on the insteps of his bare feet. His kneecaps.

“Clint retired,” she says, and drums her heels against the chair leg. Caked mud drops from her boot and she scuffs at it.

“Waffles with the kids,” he muses, “Tiling the upstairs bathroom.” He shakes his head. “I guess I’m glad he dodged the actual bullet of euphemistic ‘retirement’, but why would you think I’d care?”

She stills.

“Did you come here to talk shop, to catch me up on the water cooler gossip? Can we fast forward through the small talk, actually?”

“You have somewhere to be?”

“Nope.” His eyes crinkle around the corners as he pulls a long draft. He licks the foam from his lip. “It’s my day off.”

“Don’t let me stop you.”

“I usually write. Sleep. Beat off. Cook.” He swirls the dregs. “Not really compatible with your agenda.” The corner of his mouth twitches. "Safe to assume you're not here for cookies and head."

"I was thinking conversation.” She squirms for effect, “But if that's on the table--"

"It's not." He pauses, squints. "Maybe later. The cookies at least." He’s so contained and controlled, out to demonstrate that she’s never going to get under his skin again.

She would shrug off his indifference, not let him see it bother her, but she’s so goddamned tired of shoving everything down while she looks at all the angles. She’s physically sick of keeping a smug smile on her face to mask the churn of wary watching and worried planning. That’s not why she’s here, facing this. She wants to crash against him. Instead he keeps meeting her eyes, bemused and untouched, not a flicker of the rage she’s due, just...social niceties and mild snark. It hurts more than if he’d turned her away at the door.

Bruce tilts his bottle towards her, “Another?” like she’s an unfamiliar house guest who’s habits he’s unsure of. Hot, desperate violence taunts her just out of reach. Not the sweetness of her palm cracking against his pinkened cheek, but true bloody slaughter.

She wants to shoot him in the head just to get a reaction, anything approaching the chaos threatening to spill out of her. It was easy to ignore all this when she was alone, when it was speculation and useless remorse and not the sound of him breathing, the scent of his rain damp hair in a close hot room. She’d come to talk to him, the last stop on her pilgrimage, the last loose rope she’d hoped to tie down before the coming storm. She should have known better, with him and rope, that she'd end up tangled instead.

They both know he isn’t coming back with her, but she still needs to ask, and beer and bitchiness aside, he’s going to fucking well listen before he gives his answer.

~*~

Her face is red, a flush that could be sunburn or alcohol, but he sees the tightening dimple in one cheek, the stiffening of her bottom lip, the way she remains cool and careful, but her left hand flexes just so. Her temper is about to catch.

 _Oh_ , he thinks, _bring it_. Hulk isn’t the only one with something to show her. 

He’s been alone for a long time out here, working, hashing things out. Interrogating the time he spent in the tower, the time with Natasha, how he let himself wallow in rich indulgence, soft and content. How incredibly stupid he’d been. He wasn't lying to her, he had been holding his breath, knowing eventually she’d come.

Decisively, she stands and retrieves her rucksack from the porch, setting it on his kitchen table with a heavy thud. “I brought food. And a proposition. I thought I might stay for dinner.”

“Why bother with the lube, Natasha?” he keeps his voice pleasant, “Just go ahead and fuck me over right now. I don’t need dinner and a show.”

Her mouth tightens completely flat, but she pulls out the provisions and crouches down to stock his tiny fridge with chorizo wrapped in butcher paper, tiny potatoes, huge broad beans, and a pineapple. Looking down at the line of her back he wonders what shaped her choices at the market. The curiosity opens a crack in his resolve that also lets in the ache of missing her.

“We cook,” her voice wavers as she stands - the crack in her resolve this time - but it still holds the husky charm he finds so compelling. “We eat and we talk. No one gets bent over the table, which is a shame, but it doesn’t look sturdy enough to m--”

“Don’t.” He flinches at the rawness in his voice, and adds a twist of pity to cover it. “This is a little beneath you, don’t you think?”

She brushes her palms on her pants and then crosses her arms. He never pretended he wasn’t an asshole.

“You can stay, or you can go, Nat. Up to you. I’ll use the groceries, no need to waste food. I’m not...interested in talking....but maybe I’ll change my mind. Probably not. Right now, I’m going to sit at that table, and read, and indulge in another beer in the middle of the day.”

He moves toward the fridge but she stands planted, praetorian, arms tightly crossed like she’s holding herself down. He reaches around one side, then the other to no avail, then rolls his eyes and grabs her shoulders to physically move her aside. She stiffens and he jerks away, holding his hands up. 

“I can shove the fridge instead?”

The flush on her cheeks deepens, and she shifts her feet.

He reaches around her, deliberately not making contact, and opens the door as much as he can. It hits her in the side of her knee. He fumbles around until he locates a bottle by feel. This is so stupid. He turns away from the naked look on her face, using the edge of the kitchen table to pop the top off the beer.

“Can we just sit down again?” Her charm is gone, and if he wasn’t able to smell her sweat he’d swear she was about to start shivering. He’s always been a sucker for Natasha stripped bare. “Can we talk? We used to be able to talk.”

“We used to be able to do a lot of things,” he softens his voice, and lets his thumb skate along her hot cheekbone, fleeting. He really does hate to be the bearer of bad news. “But then someone fucked with my head, and I destroyed a city, and then I got pushed down a fucking well, so...you know...I don’t want to do _that_ again either.” He tips back the beer and walks past her to the desk table.

There’s a crash behind him.

The downside of having very few possessions is that he can tell from the sound she’d picked his favorite mug of the three to smash. And his house is so small he can almost feel her ragged panting moving the air across the nape of his neck.

He sets the bottle down with meticulous care, reaches for the book he was reading that morning before his chalk chat with Hulk, and pulls out the chair to sit.

Her outburst tastes exactly like the hurt impotent rage he struggled through in adolescence, and he channels his aunt as he finds his page, not even looking up. “If you could do me a favor and take your teenage temper tantrum outside, I'd be grateful.” He flicks his fingers toward the machete hanging from a nail between the fridge and the door, “Go chop down a tree or something.”

It's like a lightning strike, just enough warning for the hair on his arms and neck to rise, before she sinks the blade several inches into the table next to his elbow.

There's a part of him, deep in his chest, deep in his brain, that _laughs_. At him, at her, with schadenfreude and joy and dread and relief.

“Go on.” Bruce turns the page, amused and annoyed that his hands are rock steady. Like he needs another reminder that whatever flawed understanding he may have had, may still have with her, the Hulk has a separate one. “Skedaddle.”

She makes a sound like a hiccup, and with a practiced flick pops the machete free. She walks out with a straight-backed grace that reminds him of those dancers years ago, brutal and yearning and clothed only in their skin.

When he finishes the chapter, he uses the chunk of wood she hacked out of the table to mark his place, and heads out into the forest to investigate the rhythmic thunking sound.

She's tied a length of rope around her hips and a scraggly palm tree, and shimmied up. The ground is littered with severed fronds and chunks of trunk. Watching her hack down a tree in sections with only a machete and her violence is frankly pornographic. Not the view of her ass from below, though Bruce is not immune to that charm, but the recklessness, the sight of her pushed past her characteristic control. It's aggressive and messy, and the fondness it inspires in his heart nearly kills him.

He’ll give her another half hour before he starts dinner. By that time, the sun will be setting. She’ll have to stay the night.

~*~

Natasha’s arms and hips thrum, like she’s pushed the anger out of herself through the muscles, and even lifting the fork feels like effort now.

She's never vented raw emotion like that in front of someone, in fact it took a long time for her to claim them even after she was free, to see a purpose in any emotion that was worth the risk. The clarity of thought in the aftermath of the tantrum surprises her. She sees now that her need to fight with him, to push him and make him react, that was her own anger and frustration. He was always so good at taking her intensity, at transforming pain into something beautiful, and now he does it without letting her lay a finger on him.

Trust Bruce Banner to find the wisdom in a machete.

The little house smells like browned sausage and potato steam, and the scent of Bruce. She could cut up the pineapple that serves as a spiky centerpiece, and cut through his warm skin scent with tart fruit. It’s supposed to tenderize meat, isn’t it? Aren’t hearts a kind of meat? But she used her last reserve to re-sharpen his machete as he mashed the potatoes and dished everything up.

Since she’s a houseguest and all. Maybe if she leans into that, he’ll come around to talking. Or at least listening. “I’m making a good faith effort,” she begins.

Bruce hesitates, then reaches for his mug of water.

“This whole exercise is a good faith effort.” She takes a drink from the only other mug in the house, pink plastic with a cracked handle, cloudy from scratches. He'd collected the one she'd smashed into a row of broken pieces on the window sill. “I know you’ll say no. But I need to ask. I need to let you answer.”

By the light of a solar lantern, he leans back in his chair and gestures magnanimously.

Natasha summarizes the last year of diplomacy and death by committee, and the quick sketch underlines for her what they’ve lost already, what they still might be able to gain. “I know how this works, Bruce. As a united front--hell, even just the right handful--we could have aimed high, negotiated fiercely, and made enough concessions that those calling for blood would think they’d bent us, but we could have hamstrung Ross early on. At the most, we would have relented to protective custody for you and Maximoff at The Hague, where you’d still have been safe from factions that wanted to--and I quote--’ _shoot you into space_ ’.”

“That sounds like a real treat. I’m glad I missed it.”

“If you ever doubt your scientific legacy, you should read the official statement from NASA. They dismiss the space thing in the first paragraph, the rest is a highlight reel. It’s heartwarming.”

His eyes roll, but then dart down, and for a long moment he blinks and his mouth twitches.

She eases her tone, wanting to work with whatever is churning in his head, “You’d have been safe from being poked and prodded for data and samples, safe from being provoked for the political capital of an incident. You would have been your thoughtful and least-snarky self, as people who’ve worked with you all over the world came forward and testified about you.”

Even his scoff sounds broken.

“There’s a reason SHIELD deemed you not a threat on the ground years ago,” she concludes as matter-of-fact as she can manage. “It’s why we always actively protected you from Ross.”

“Ah, but you see,” he reaches out to toy with a pottery shard, his voice soothing like a lullaby, “ _I am_ a threat on the ground.”

Natasha sighs. Maybe he is better off hiding from this entirely, pretending this is the only good he’s capable of. His voice and insight in the early days after Sokovia might have made a difference in the direction of the Accords, but then again, he would have made a tantalizing sacrifice.

Odds are, in the aftermath of Johannesburg, he would have walked to the slaughter willingly.

“Not to me,” she says softly, and his mouth tightens, curling with the ugliest of irony. She doesn’t have it in her to be embarrassed.

“Would you still bet your life on that?”

She meets his gaze, and there’s nothing soft there. Good, she doesn’t feel soft right now. “With him? Yes. Now, and in the future. Absolutely.”

“And with me?”

She drums her fingers on the table because it’s such a stupid fucking question. She’s tired of his delusion that they’re separate. That she can separate them. That this separation isn’t fucking awful. That she doesn’t miss them both. That she can do anything about it besides give him the small truths she holds. “You’re far more of a threat,” she says. “You always have been, and yet here I am.”

“What do you want, Natasha?” There’s anguish behind the curiosity, the continuous play-acting like she’s here for tea and cookies and banter. She’ll take it.

“For you to come back. Rejoin the team. Demonstrate your own good faith. Help us build something new that people can look to--”

“No.” His hands twist into the familiar tic, right thumb petting his left knuckles. 

“Bruce--”

“I’m not a poster boy for peace and harmony, Nat. I never have been. You said it yourself, I’m a threat too. It’s never just been…” He opens his fist with a jarring flick, irritated at his own tell, and presses the heel of that hand into his eye-socket, very deliberately putting the other on the table, fingers spread.

It’s very close to where her hand rests, scraped and blistered.

“I helped make Ultron. I believed that I was above the rules of common sense and scientific committee. I let Tony persuade me that we could build something that we both knew was exceedingly dangerous even if it _had_ worked, because I wanted to. I got soft, Natasha, and complacent, and frankly sex-drunk, and...happy...and I stopped focusing on trying to do good, and just did what I wanted.”

He keeps her gaze. “And I killed people.”

She makes herself withstand the haunted look in his face, the truth of his words.

“I can’t go back because I can’t let myself forget those things again.”

~*~

Every day he sits with the seething anger, trying to understand and transform it. Some days all he can do is go into the jungle and let it ripple through him, let Hulk have his way. Put chalk in his pocket and let Hulk have his say. He used to think that as long as he stayed Banner, he was being good. He knows now how very wrong he was.

Bruce is grateful she doesn’t have a quick reply after he spells that out for her. He gathers the plates and gives them a quick wash, and she wipes them dry and stacks them. 

Natasha takes up every ounce of space in the small house; her breath, the smell of her hair, the focus in her eyes, her truths and their infinite variations, the powerful lines of her compact body.

She pours him water from the pitcher in the fridge, brushing his elbow as she sets down the cup, staying as he drinks. He curls his toes in his shoes to keep himself from wrapping an arm around her hip, pressing his head into her belly. If she reached out, it would be easy to let her persuade him back, but even her expression is inscrutable. He can’t, he won’t, but it would be so easy, and he longs for easy.

The longing itself is a kind of sustenance, that the connection remains, and perhaps one day...

“We need to set up the hammock,” he takes a step away, and then another. “We can string it across the corner, here.”

~*~

The teamwork of hanging his travel hammock is effortless and soothing. The house is already fitted with welded rings for the carabiner clips, which means the sparse wooden bedframe in the corner is a choice. She gets it, sleeping with his back to the wall. She’d have made the same choice.

After they secure a second mosquito netting from a hook on the ceiling, Bruce sets the small LED lamp on the floor. It casts eerie light around their feet, leaving the rest of the house in noisy tropical darkness. Bruce steps away and she hears him splash water, rinse out a rag, and he comes back into the light stripped down to a t-shirt and boxers. It’s cloyingly warm in the small house, and she suspects the clothes are a barrier against her.

She’ll sleep in her tank and underwear, then. She sets her boots on the spare kitchen chair, capped with her socks so they stay empty of wildlife, and folds her pants over them. He waits for her to negotiate the hammock before he clicks off the light and settles into his creaky bed.

The night sounds are amplified by the dark, but once her eyes adjust she can see the outline of his arm tucked under his head, knee crooked up the way it is when he’s hot and restless and sleep eludes him. His deep meditative breathing sounds like a conversation with himself.

Being this close in the dark, their faults laid bare, is excruciating...and desperately welcome. She longs to close the distance, to press her heated skin to his, to let the sweat gather from sticky to slick, let the jostling for space become a grappling for pleasure, for intimacy. Missing him from four feet away is agony, and very much beside the point of why she came.

She can’t apologize because she won’t lie to him, but there’s still something that needs to be said, and maybe she can find the right words in the dark. “Bruce?”

He makes a noise in his throat, an invitation to continue.

“This probably won’t surprise you,” she needs him to hear, no matter what he does with the words after. “And it’s not meant as an excuse, but...I’m still surprised we survived at all.”

There’s a long pause, and she can feel the way he’s absolutely steeled against emotion bleeding through. “Would survival have changed your calculations at all? If you’d known?”

She gives the wall a push, rocking the hammock. It feels like a luxury to release the nervous gesture. “I’m always running options, projecting consequences. Even for best case scenarios.”

“That’s a very diplomatic, ‘no’.”

“I’ve been practicing.” The swaying comes to rest. “Whatever I did right then, I was taking a side in a fight between you and the big guy. I knew it wouldn’t go over well.”

He sighs, and sounds oddly diffident, “We’ve...come to realize...that it wasn’t fair. To put you in the middle, and then make you pick. Inevitable, maybe, since we both like you more than we can even tolerate each other, but...we’re working on that. What surprised me was that it was so easy for you to veto my choice.”

“Don’t confuse rapidity for ease.” She dials her voice back down from strident, “I wasn’t going to let an irrational emotional reaction jeopardize the mission. Mine or yours.” Listening to him breathe in the dark, remembering the nudge of his belly against hers as he slept in her arms, she finally lets herself wonder if part of the reason she pushed him was to prove to herself that she still could. “There were too many people in danger, they needed us not be selfish. To do everything in our power to help.”

“Do you see now why I’m here? Why I’m trying to get my shit together?”

Bruce’s ability to choose what to do with his life, with his power, is already irrevocably curtailed by sharing a body, and leveraging her weight on either side of the fulcrum impinges on the life of one being or the other. Both of whom she cares about. One of whom she loves.

His chuckle is bitter. “And you’d have me caged for the greater good.”

The way his throat clenches on the word _caged_ makes her own tighten. 

“That’s not true.” 

“Oh no?”

“Going into this…I thought the right answer was always going to be yes. Yes to the fight, yes to giving everything...for the greater good, as you say.” Natasha is trying with every fiber of her being, the person she knows herself to be and hopes to become, to do good in the world. To take the correct path even if she has to clear it herself and walk it alone. As an inveterate survivor, it’s taken her a long time to see how choice itself can be more valuable than life. “Yes only has meaning when you’re free to say no.”

~*~

The distance between them is excruciating; over an arm’s length away, but still too close.

He clutches at his anger instead, a reminder of why he doesn’t want to walk back into that life with her. He didn’t leave on a whim, and he hasn’t yet settled his shit.

Natasha knows how to get under his skin, and he doesn’t doubt she’s determined where he’s weakest. Softest. He braces for a further discussion of how he could come back and it wouldn’t be a cage, exactly, more like a perimeter fence, a shock collar on a dog.

“What if…” she pauses, like for once in her life her words aren’t measured out like a chess gambit. Like she’s surprising herself. “What if there is no team...you just come back. With me.”

This is the second time she’s made him freeze, caught him in such a finely balanced dilemma even his lungs lock up. The first had been in a chintzy bedroom where she’d ripped open horror and grief. Now it’s a hermit shack where she’s offering up hard-won compromise, and something like hope. He can’t say yes. He can’t make himself say no.

She hears his paralyzed silence, and sighs for him. “What are you really running from?” The hurt in her voice doesn’t pain him nearly as much as the world-weariness of it, the self-recrimination of letting herself even ask or want in the first place.

“Natasha...” This should be easier in the dark, where she can’t see the slice of his self-cutting smile, but even separately swathed in netting and night he feels flayed. He might as well pull off the tattered remains. “I’m running from the part of me that loves that you pushed.” 

“The big guy didn’t seem so happy to see me.”

“Not _him_ , the part of _me_. I hate that it’s so easy to let that rage out, that it feels so fucking good when I give in to the most dangerous part of me.”

“Even if you use it for good?”

“How would I ever be able to know for sure? I’m not you, I can’t--it’s not a tool, not even a rusty machete, it’s a howling vicious punitive thing I hold back every damned day.”

“Do you think I don’t know that? Don’t understand it? Don’t...share it?”

His fists are balled up now, pulse beating hard in his throat and he knows she can hear it, can hear the way he shifts in the bed, negotiating for the other guy as the emotion roars up and he remembers all of the ways in which she can’t really keep from manipulating him, and how often he offers himself up for it for the sheer pleasure of her touch.

She does share it, in a way, but even watching her take out her raw anger on that tree he could see that it was something she was letting herself channel. Her violence has always been like clean prose, her impulses like vicious poetry, compared to the overwhelming viceral howl of his own anger. His disdain for her cold blood is borne of envy. Does she dream of it like he does? Does it even matter to her if she does?

“I got too comfortable,” he says. “For a moment, with you, I forgot what I was capable of--not Hulk. Me.”

“I'll accept that for a moment you toyed with the idea of not constantly vilifying yourself for every past mistake.”

He presses his lips together, breathes through his nose slowly. “Living with this, it’s about constantly pushing my tolerance higher. Embracing the anger and the annoyance, the frustration and pain. Pushing through to find compassion, patience.”

“Adventure,” she adds, “connection.”

He sighs. He can’t deny that curiosity and wanderlust are part of this, and she’s interviewed enough of his colleagues over the years to know that for all his awkward reserve, he seeks out friendships whenever he settles in for more than a few days. 

“The only pleasure you allow yourself is the runner’s high, the endorphins on the other side of pain. Is that all you deserve?”

“I deserve to be put down for the things I’ve done.”

“Well, wish in one hand, shit in the other.”

He laughs in spite of himself. Prosaic, practical, persuasive. He wants to shake her, shake himself, lay his head on her pale thigh and let her lead him. He needs to sleep, if it’ll come.

“Goodnight,” he murmurs, and she hmphs and the night sounds settle around them, thick as the dark.

~*~

At least he left a note this time. _Be back sometime mid-day. Borrowed your ride. B_

Natasha decides to be amused, if only because she hadn’t woken up when he started the bike. She’d spent the night in a half-doze and dropped off just before dawn, deeper than she’d realized. She could find transportation if she wanted it. She isn’t ready to go.

The house is cool in the early morning, and she stretches through a long, luxurious set of sun salutations that ease the cricks out of her neck from the hammock.

She makes coffee, eats fruit and slightly stale bread, and finds the sun shower Bruce has rigged in the back of the house. Finally clean from days of the road and exertion, and mostly dry from her chamois travel towel, Natasha eyes her filthy clothing with distaste and decides not to put it back on.

There’s a wash tub on the porch and clean water from the faucet, so she walks around to the front door, unselfconsciously nude, and gathers all her laundry. They’re light, high-tech moisture-wicking fabrics. It’s possible they’ll dry before Bruce returns.

His clothes are stacked in a pile on a rickety table in the corner of the bedroom. She hesitates, then chooses a soft chambray button down. It’s decadent and a little mean-spirited, and she doesn’t intend for him to see her wearing it, but she perversely enjoys the idea of leaving her scent behind on it. She has to roll up the sleeves.

The temptation to lay down on his bed strikes her like a blow, to feel the worn cotton blanket against the back of her thighs, press her face into his pillow. She turns away from the urge, an addict waving off a fix. It’d only be a hollow substitute.

Instead she squats down to examine the stack of books he’s using as a nightstand: Spanish poetry, theoretical physics, a true crime paperback in Portuguese, a few airport romances by Alisha Rai. She slips a book out of the stack, and spends the morning drinking coffee, doing laundry and reading. It’s not the worse morning she’s ever spent. After fifty pages of Ted Bundy, she switches to one of the romances _._

When Bruce putters up on her bike around two, her clothes have dried and she’s back in her tank top and her hiking shorts, sitting on his porch. The air is thick with humidity, and the heroine has just discovered, after a passionate and remarkably detailed sex scene, that perhaps she might marry the protagonist after all.

The morning’s guilty decadence has given over to something languid that makes her wary. Being alone in Bruce’s monk cell space, amid the few things he’s gathered that mean something to him, that he’ll still leave behind if need be, has left her feeling unguarded.

She marks the place with her finger even though the book already falls open to that chapter, and stretches her legs. He rubs at his mouth, and she’s aware that he’s watching her in his peripheral vision.

His hair is a disaster, thick and unruly, t-shirt clinging his shoulders, his stubble outlining his jaw. The sensation of it scraping against her neck, across her breasts, between her thighs...she can’t let him see her the intensity of her desire for him, amped up by absence and frustration, warring with the deep-seated need to simply be present and not persuade. Her body is awash with discomfort. 

“Sorry about not asking,” he gestures at the bike, and doesn’t sound sorry at all.

“Did you bring back lunch?”

He holds up sandwiches wrapped in brown paper. “I need a shower, first. Hauled a bunch of pallets around for a friend.”

“I may have used all the hot water.” To be fair, the sun shower only had enough for one go. 

He opens his mouth, and then just hands her the sandwiches on the way into the house. “I guess we’re even.”

He comes back with a gallon of water, pulling his t-shirt over his head. Right in the yard he douses his head, scrubbing at his hair, using the shirt to scour the sweat from his body, which is tan all over.

Natasha wonders if Hulk tans, if the verdant skin goes brighter or darker, if it’s melanin or cholorphyll. He drinks some of the water and pours the rest over his head, and it’s a waste and a show, but she’s riveted, as it runs down the planes of his shoulders and his back, beading up in the hollow above his sacrum, exposed by the shorts riding low.

A memory hits her of standing behind him in an exquisitely appointed shower, pressed against his strong back cheek to spine, his head resting back against her shoulder. His cock heavy and perfect in her grip as she worked him. Feeling him tense and stiffen, pulse in her hand, and turn in her arms to press her against the slick tiles…

Now, she wants to trace the drops of water, feel the give of his flesh against her fingertips, tell him again she meant what she offered last night. About coming home with her...and only that.

He sits next to her on the step, and she hands over a sandwich.

They eat in silence until the portents of rain turn into an actual downpour, and then she follows him inside.

“I’ve been thinking about cookies,” he says over the rain pelting the tin roof. “Since yesterday. And all the way back here from town.”

She looks pointedly at his lack of an oven.

“Oh, ye of little faith.”

“Cookies,” she says slowly, catching her lower lip between her teeth.

He watches her, mesmerized, then pulls his gaze away to reach for a bowl and mutter firmly, as if to himself, “Since head is off the table.”

Natasha watches from his desk as he creams together sugar, brown sugar and coconut oil, then adds eggs from his crappy fridge, flour, baking soda, salt. He oils the cast iron skillet and she darts to her rucksack. She digs down past socks and toiletries, and the kerchief she forgot to wash earlier, still knotted from holding her hair up the day before.

“I paid six bucks at the airport,” she hands over a small bag of M&Ms, “might as well use them for something special.”

He nods, and she rips open the bag. He folds the candies in, scrapes the dough into the skillet, and starts it on the burner. He hovers over it, expectant and avoidant, for long minutes.

She rests her chin in her hand and asks idly, “Is the head really off the table, though? Seems to me that a rainy afternoon and oral sex go pretty well together.”

He shifts, shoulders tensing. “Not right now,” he says. 

She tilts her head, musing, “Hate sex can be exhilarating.”

“Jesus, Natasha, do you think I hate you?”

She stands, and crowds into his space without touching him. Heat rises off the cast iron, and the cookie dough is a sweet note amid the scents of hot metal and petrichor. “You hate yourself,” she says. “Or you try to.”

He turns his head to the side, face inches from hers. “I’m trying,” he says softly, “to work on that. It takes time. And space.”

It’s torture to keep her hands to herself with his gaze dancing over her mouth, her throat, her bared arms. To see that conflict still there, and hear the answer Bruce is giving her, and accept it. Exhaustion sweeps over her, the restless night, the weeks of travel, the effort to keep herself from doing anything but giving him the truths that she has.

“Okay,” she steps aside, and flinches with a hiss when pain shoots up the back of her arm.

“Shit,” he pulls her away from the burner with a hand on her waist.

She cups her elbow, the skin hot and tight, the pain bright. You think it’s about dessert, but you end up playing with fire.

“Let me get my kit,” he says, but she waves him off.

“It’s fine, I’ve had worse,” she reaches to open the fridge to pour cold water over the burn. It throbs, and now the cookie smell has turned acrid, “The stove, Bruce…”

“Fuck.” He snaps off the burner and turns the offending pan handle away. The dough has only just melted in the center, but he’s abandoned it to take the water pitcher from her hand.

“Finish the damn cookies, Banner.”

“Carryover heat,” he says, and holds out a damp cloth. She pushes him away.

“It’s fine, it’ll heal.”

“Can you see your own elbow?” His exasperation is comical. “Let me tend to it, for fuck’s sake.”

“It’s just a stupid burn.”

“It’s an open wound.”

“You don’t need to worry about my boo-boos.” And my, her own bitterness feels surprisingly good.

“So, what, if you don’t bring me back, then a screw worm is just as good?”

“Fuck you, Bruce,” she says.

“We already decided that was off the table.”

“You decided,” she shoots back, but under his look of pinched compassion she relents, takes a seat, and holds up her arm.

He presses a cool cloth over the burn, gentle, and she holds it in place while he digs for gauze. Slipping into the old pattern of repairing her minor wounds is easy, and that more than anything eases the sting. He holds her forearm steady, hot fingers wrapped around her wrist. She tries to breathe normally.

His fingers graze the tender flesh above her elbow as he smooths on burn cream, brushing her ribs as he tapes on protective gauze, and if his touch lingers for a few more beats than necessary, both of them flushed with the contact, neither of them says anything.

“There you go,” he says, voice throaty, hands nervous as he puts away the kit.

It’s a relief that he’s affected, but she’s restless too, as water beats against the roof and the cookies coast in their own heat. She needs a distraction. “So...you’re working...”

He nods. 

“On what?”

“Control,” he shrugs, “Understanding.” He flicks an eyebrow, cheeky, “Perfecting the handstand.”

“Show me?”

His nervy smile fades. “You’re not asking for much, are you?”

She looks away. “I’m not gathering intel, Bruce. I just...you look good and you’re pissed at me, but you’re also making bad jokes and stealing my bike, so it makes me think that whatever you’re working on is...working.”

He studies her for a long time. The history between them weighs her words, his regard.

This isn’t about fucking. It’s not about love. It’s not about rage or even trust. It’s about vision. It’s about how she sees him, sees them, sees a team and not conflicting forces. The way he fights against any kind of synergy and how she finds that struggle fucking beautiful. The force of his gaze shivers along her skin, and maybe she wouldn’t mind being flayed by it.

“I’ll uh,” Bruce blinks like he’s shaking himself, “I’ll be back in a bit, I need to get something.” He heads out the door, leaving Natasha sitting at the table, staring out the window as his back disappears into the downpour.

She blows out a long slow breath, but her heart quickens and beats even harder. It wasn’t so bad when she was uncertain, when she was furious, when she was shaky from exhaustion. But now, even the searing pain of the burn can’t cut through the building arousal. Sex-drunk, he’d called it, but she needs sobriety without distractions.

Natasha props a knee up against the table edge, and keeps her eyes peeled on the treeline. She’s sweaty and wet when she slips her hand under the damp waistband of her shorts, and if she weren’t alone she might be embarrassed by how soon she’s shuddering, gulping breath, and stroking to a second quick climax.

She sucks the taste from her fingers as he appears at the treeline, and wipes them dry with the handkerchief from her bag. She’s tying her hair up with it when he steps back onto the porch.

Bruce comes in with a rectangular board balanced on his head. He pauses, then decisively tips it against the wall face forward.

It’s a chalkboard, emblazoned _Bits & Cream Heladeria_ across the top.

The surface is dusty with layers of chalk ghosts, the kind of visual puzzle she enjoys deciphering, but this isn’t a little trifle to solve. Natasha steps closer, and sinks down on the concrete floor to sit even with the board, while Bruce busies himself cutting pie slices of cookie. 

Two sets of handwriting. She recognizes the first one even if it’s faster and more jagged than his precise lab notes.

The other is careful printing, large letters, the grammar declarative, but not simple.

She breathes out, “This is the writing you do.”

Bruce bites a large chunk of cookie and nods, pushing his glasses up. He’s avoiding her eyes, but she’s not taking that personally anymore.

When he deems her ready, he bends down to set a journal into her lap.

The notebook is cheap paper, the blue lines faint and blurry under the crisp marks of his pen. His convention is to render his own words in cursive and Hulk’s in print, but the entries aren’t simply recorded from the chalkboard, they’re interpreted. Yesterday’s date appears in several places, two to four exchanges apiece about whether they should stay if Gualberto is right about Red coming to town, why can’t they buy more fruit, who’s responsible for which nightmare, and who Bruce is mad at _really_.

Each addition is carefully dated like entries a lab book, but the disjointed conversations have the chapter and verse quality of a holy book. She does not want to read the Song of Salome, see herself cast as wielding the seven viels and collecting heads...but she has never been one to turn down vital information, and, she tells herself, it would not be the first time two other people have buried the hatchet by planting it in her back together.

This whole exercise is about practicing faith in other people, in rejecting binary choices and creating a middle path. It’s worthwhile to find out if anyone can walk that path with her. To mentor and not just train. To fight for her found family. To counter the argument that they can only be weapons or tools, to insist that they are people with the right to their own choices.

To give Bruce his own choices. Natasha turns the pages with shaking fingers. 

It takes her more than an hour to really go through it, to weigh and measure and understand what she’s seeing. She nibbles at the cookie, it’s texture more like a brownie, and Bruce putters with his tablet and logbooks from work.

The thing about trust and choice is that it’s not a two way street with them, it’s a three way intersection, and it’s incredibly intimate for him to let her see these conversations. The efforts at synergy she’d hoped for. The distance still to go. She knows now that she won’t ask him again to come back.

They don’t talk much as he fixes dinner, as she cleans up. 

The re-string the hammock and when Bruce hesitates for a moment, as he peels off his shirt to sleep in his shorts, eyes flicking to his bed, she simply says goodnight.

~*~

Bruce rises early and takes her motorbike into Cobija proper to see if Gualberto has work for him. A couple days speaking English and he feels the need to shove himself deeper into his life here, wallow in it like an itchy animal bathing in dust.

What felt like penance now feels like self-indulgence. Maybe not as selfish and ridiculous as chatting in the dark about a life they’ll never share, as if to prove that it’s the world’s fault they can’t and not their own.

The supplies haven’t arrived yet, so his usual couple days of repacking vaccination kits for distribution is still on hold, and since he helped train Cecília and Hernán there’s no backlog of lab work. He ends up tagging along with a fumigation crew, an MSF pilot project run by SMS alerts sending them to homes with chinch bug problems, in hopes of preventing Chagas. The spraying is fussy work, incredibly hot and sweaty from the protective gear, but satisfying.

Bruce stays the night in town. It’s easier to have dinner and spend the night with Gualberto’s family than go back and make any decisions just yet.

From the moment he saw her standing on his porch two things have been inescapable; anger and love. With her safe and sound in his quiet house, he could allow himself the luxury of being furious with her for making a deal with Hulk behind his back. With the anger receding, he can see that her presumption is another facet of the daring he’s always admired in her, throwing herself into fights any sane person would walk away from.

He’s already forgiven her, and without the anger there’s nothing to hold back the affection and the lust, the longing to close that gap between them.

Except when he gets back the next morning, his house is locked up tight, and Natasha is gone.

The week goes by in a blur after that, because he throws himself into the work crew, coming home just long enough to wash, roll into bed, brew some coffee, and head back out at first light. He eats in town, telling himself he's too busy to market or cook, but he knows better. He’s trying to shove himself back into this life here, but she's touched too much of it. When he's out of clean shorts he finally tackles the piled up housework in a flurry of cleaning, keeping occupied with that instead. Once everything has been wiped and swept and put away, when he's back at the house with his bundle fresh from the laundromat, sitting on the floor folding clothes into neat piles and thinking about the most complicated thing he could cook that evening, to keep the ball rolling, he finally stops.

It wasn't in any of the loads he did today. He hasn't worn it since he did laundry a week ago.

Bruce looks through his the stacks of pants and shirts, washcloths and towels. He dumps out his work satchel, and the heavy canvas and leather travel bag that still holds his rain coat, a thick sweater for colder climes, a rolled suit jacket of forgettable dark tweed. He searches the whole place, and does not find his blue chambray shirt. Instead he finds a grey handkerchief, crumpled up but still tied the way it was knotted around Natasha's head. He tosses it on the bed, and doesn't think about it for hours.

Deep in the night, when he's sick of not sleeping, he picks it up and stretches out on his bed.

He knows how to make peace with longing, how to squeeze the empty spaces down so he doesn’t feel so hollow. The cold comfort has been familiar, but it’s not a life.

The scrap of fabric smells like her hair, the knot tight and stiff from her sweat. Bruce slips it on his wrist, doubled, and spits into his other hand.

By the time he comes, body curled and straining around his fist, he's biting his own forearm to muffle the noise. He refrains from saying her name out loud. For days, he runs a thumb across the bruises.


	13. Reprise

### Reprise

~*~

_Can't be unlearned_

_I've known the warmth of your doorways_

_Through the cold_

_I'll find my way back to you_

_\-- **Hozier**_

~*~

With fingers gone clumsy from cold, Natasha tries the next key on the ring, and promises herself that when she gets done tonight she will check on her spider.

Her pet crawls the web. She has taught it hundreds of names culled from charity dances and coffee meetings and a thousand interactions in offices, cafeterias, warehouses, luncheons and expos, even before the Hub became a superfund cleanup site on the banks of the Potomac. She plays with the spider when she’s bored, but also when she’s lonely and lost, when she feels the suffocating weight of pointlessness.

The drag of freelance superheroics. The grind of underground avenging. It’s the gig economy, kids.

At least Carter gave her a decent dossier for this contract mission; she’s moving up, clearly. Any agency that recognized talent and dedication like Sharon's, and spent some discretionary budget digging into the profiteers that recruited and deep-conditioned Helmut Zemo as a catspaw, had some merit.

In the meantime, Natasha reminds herself that losing her gloves in Lake Sammamish was preferable to losing the fight, or her life. She got the keys and phone, got back ashore without being seen, and the water sloshing in her boots has finally warmed up.

On rough days the spider entertains and cheers her with data culled from business networking and university websites, social media and resumes and curriculum vitae. It tells Natasha about the paid internships she’s spurred into being, the scholarships and grants and projects where she put a bug in someone's ear and saved a career, paved the way to a better school, kept a SHIELD family from losing their home...her own superfund cleanup in hundreds of lives she feels some responsibility for. The dead remain dead, but the living stay with her.

A key finally slides into the lock.

Her mark’s apartment is humble and clean, a rental through one of the shell companies insulating the real power brokers from the guy who’s now at the bottom of the lake along with her gloves. She lets her eyes adjust to the gloom, and flexes her fists slowly, her knuckles feeling like they want to split through the skin.

The problem with chilblains is not the burning swollen itch when blood returns to nearly frozen flesh, but the nostalgia that accompanies it. The pain feels like the will to live, the throb in her hands a reminder that she was stronger than every other girl she’d fought.

When pain means life, it's hard to believe that life is not always pain.

Natasha pulls her boots and wet socks off, and shoves her feet into the house slippers discarded by the door, cheap fleece but warm and dry, and more importantly, they won't leave footprints as she searches. It doesn’t take her long to locate the drives or the cash, but there’s a bonus nasty surprise that nearly bites her.

Pre-loaded syringes, one with a dislodged cap.

She holds one up to the weak light leaking in from the parking lot, and the oily blue contents take her right back to a kitchen in Cleveland.

Dr. Kikkert’s nostrum remedium.

Natasha carefully resets the cap, mind racing with new and unpleasant connections. If the power brokers Ross is beholden to are now Akesotech customers...Bernice is in serious danger.

Millions, eventually, if Bernice is silenced before she can speak out.

Natasha wraps the syringes in junk mail flyers and sticks them in a kitschy butter cookie tin. She waits until dark, but before any of the neighbors get home from work, swinging off the side of the front steps so as not to disturb the fresh dusting of powdery snow. She trudges down the road to the next apartment complex and flags down a pizza guy to take her back into town where her car is parked.

Heater blowing full blast, she runs scenarios all the way to her rendezvous with Carter.

At the diner a waitress half her age takes one look at her face, calls her _baby_ and leaves her the carafe with the coffee cup, and doesn’t even blink when she orders the cherry pie to come before the cheese sticks. Bernice finally responds to her urgent welfare check, on a lunch break at a conference in Osaka. Natasha suggests getting some sightseeing in afterward, that it might even be worth the cost of changing her return flight last minute.

_Take your time_ , Natasha texts with one thumb, forking in the last piece of pink stained sugar-glazed crust, _we’ll catch up when you get back._

Sharon arrives with the cheese sticks, and for a long moment they both watch the steam rise from the basket while the agent shakes her head.

“The sugar is quick, and the cheese will stick,” Natasha slides a napkin across the table with a thumb drive tucked inside. She doesn’t mention the physical evidence--she needs a preliminary analysis before she sets anything big into motion--but she knows Sharon assumes she keeps copies of any documentation she hands over as a contractor. “Anything you might have neglected to mention about this one?”

Sharon spoons ice cubes into her coffee cup. “I assumed you were aware there were some familiar names.”

“Secretarial.”

“Mmm, one could say that.”

“I assumed as much. Though maybe not the best piecework to throw my way, considering my lack of objectivity.”

“Your ‘lack of objectivity’ is exactly why I punted this to you. You know how contrarian the INR is about received wisdom. Your history is not the liability you think it is.” She squares her shoulders, “There’s a path opening up for you, if you want to go legit again.”

Natasha laughs, and coughs acidic marinara. “The last time a blond said something like that to me, there was an arrow right,” she circles her finger a foot from her left eye, “about here.”

“I’ll remember for next time.” Sharon steals a cheese stick. “Sweeten the deal.”

Nat scoffs, then presses. “Nothing else I should have known? There were some surprises. I had to take decisive action.”

Sharon chews, wary. “How decisive?”

Natasha picks the dried bits from the grazes on her knuckles.

Sharon sighs. “I wish I could throw in hazard pay.”

“You know what I _could_ use…”

She expects Sharon to come through with a hint, an old sighting or a rumor. Carter surprises her the next day with an actual address, about an hour and a half away. Fury had trained all of them so very well.

~*~

Up to the far northwest corner of the US, to the back of a property lodged in a patch of woods, up the dirt and gravel drive past the main house, to a small renovated pole barn way out back, it doesn't occur to Natasha until she knocks on the door that Bruce might not be at home. The whole front of the place is windows and sliding glass doors, but the drapes are drawn and none of the lights are on.

The wreath hanging on the door is handmade, pine boughs woven like a big dandelion crown, and she wonders if the reason Bruce keeps finding these rural situations is so that Hulk also has space to be out in the world.

She hopes so. But she needs Bruce right now.

Her face is angled away from the porchlight when it flicks on, but it’s not like he doesn’t have a thousand ways to recognize her even bundled in a parka. The deadbolt snicks, and the door opens.

Bruce is framed in the quickly fogging screen door, sleep mussed, his hand resting on the latch for a long moment before he swings it open and catches at her sleeve to pull her in.

He shuffles into the kitchen to put on the kettle and dump black tea into a pot, scratching his head, and his belly, and his ass. She doffs her boots and balaclava, and sets the biscuit tin on the little cafe table that delineates the kitchen from the living area. A partial wall separates the bedroom, not enough to hide that his blankets are a mess. He shifts a load of laundry into the dryer, then leans back on the unit to look at her as the water comes to a boil.

She clears her throat, “I’m sorry to wake you. I thought I got here early enough.”

He waves a hand, yawning, “Diphenhydramine.” At her curious look he elaborates, “Preventive. It’s a quiet neighborhood, they tell me fireworks aren’t a thing, but better safe than startled.” He crosses his arms and cocks his head, prompting, “New Year’s?”

Natasha sits down on a kitchen chair.

Holiday decorations had been a blur in the background for months now, but she's slipped back to the fringes of society where she doesn't consciously track information irrelevant to the mission. It had felt life-changing being part of the team back in the tower, even running the Facility upstate had a rhythm of administrative paperwork to keep her tethered, but the thin skin of civility is always going to be a costume, isn't it? At a loss, all she can say is, “It didn't occur to me...I’m...sorry.”

“Yeah, I’m gonna take that as an answer to ‘ _how’ve you been_ ’.” He splashes milk into two mugs and takes the teapot with him into the living area. “Come on, take your coat off. Snow’s coming, you’re not driving anywhere like this.”

Natasha takes the tin with her, setting it on the dinged coffee table away from the teapot. Two mismatched sofas sit at a right angle. She sits in the middle of the blue plaid one.

Bruce sips, and takes the near end of the brown velvet one.

She should drink the tea, at least, but she knows her hand will shake if she reaches. Focus on the knot in her stomach, the vibration of exhausted muscles, breathe through it, find steadiness.

“Natasha,” the concern in his voice makes her eyes snap open, searching for the threat, but it's only Bruce, standing near, hands on his knees to peer at her.

“I'm okay,” she says, but her voice is gritty and thin, and she's shivering outright.

“Okay,” Bruce sinks down into a crouch, and raises his hand slowly toward her forehead, giving her warning.

Natasha catches his wrist, inches away from contact. It's still contact, still his skin and warmth touching her, but she needs the control. “Just come-down, that's all. I've been running for days.”

“Right,” he says, unconvinced. He sits back on his heels and flicks a hand toward the table. “You didn't actually bring me cookies this time, did you?”

“‘Fraid not.”

Bruce huffs as he leans over to get the tin, “I knew you were only interested in me for my brain.”

Natasha sinks into the cushions and watches his hands work with a fond nostalgic ache. She looks to his face to note his reaction to the syringes and the vials, but when he whistles a long falling note she has to look away from his mouth.

She can feel the imprint of those lips even now, damp on her skin. It’s fair to say she’s never been interested in just his brain, from the moment she started crafting a lure to draw him to the edge of town before they even met.

“I can’t give you anything, you know, I don’t actually have a lab I can pull out of my ass.” Bruce squints at the liquid in the vials, which is a bit more viscous than water, and the color of clear blue sky.

Natasha reaches into the right cup of her bra, hooks her fingers into the small pocket sewn between the lace facing and the curve of the underwire. She sets the drive onto his palm, and his fingers close around it. “Take a look, tell me what questions I need to ask.”

Bruce pulls a laptop from underneath the couch and taps for several minutes before inserting the drive. She curls against the arm of the couch and watches the saccades of his eyes as he pores through the data.

The room is dark when he shakes her shoulder, just moonlight bouncing off snow and filtering through the gaps in the drapes. She’s cold and stiff.

“C’mon,” his fingers are loose around her wrist, but he pulls with intent, and leads her around the partial wall that screens off the back half of the room.

She stands numbly as he strips down, the same efficient pattern of movements he’d use in the field when they had time to formally call a code green, but when he slips off his jeans he’s bare beneath them, the sliver of light at the foot of the bed revealing dark hair and a flash of the skin of his cock.

He pulls the covers back and waits a beat. She pulls off her sweater, and goes down to skin as well. In this moment, she’s too tired to keep standing against the comfort he’s offering.

She’s never wanted to, in point of fact, even when she was terrified of it and furious at him for presenting this as something she could possibly have.

They know how to nestle against each other, even now. He coaxes her head onto his chest.

“I only came here for the consult,” the words leak out of her, “not to hassle you for forgiveness.”

“Shhh,” he sinks his fingers into her hair, massaging her head so slowly it feels like water eroding stone, inexorable. “That’s past tense anyway: forgiven.”

She pets through the hair on his belly, sliding down through his bush and gliding across the satiny skin of his inner thighs. Tears slip down the bare centimeter between her eye and the sound of his heart against her cheek. She dozes and he shushes, hardening and softening by turns.

She falls asleep for good, her hand cradled around his balls.

~*~

Bruce wakes up hungry and hungover and hard, Natasha’s warm back pressed up to his chest, her ass nestled against his groin, soft and tempting.

The last time he’d seen her had been on a bar tv, European sirens in the background, dubbed into Portuguese with too high a voice, her trim dark suit singed from a terrorist blast. She’d been pared down to the mission, sharp enough to cut yourself on.

She’s put weight back on since then, both muscle and camouflage, and it plays up the facade of youth, blurs the lines of her physique, makes her blend in easier. This Natasha is just soft enough to hide in her skin, a small pretty woman among thousands in this college town, her athleticism coming across as plucky. Maybe the blond hair reminds them of someone, but it's a pleasant memory.

He slides out of the bed like tiptoeing across enemy lines, loathe to wake her, to impose knowledge of any of the needs of his body on her. He’s never seen her like she was last night, not just the blonde hair, but the brittleness. She’d stood in his doorway, the cold seeping in around her like she couldn’t move herself forward. As if he’d turn her away. As if he’d want to. 

He makes eggs and toast for two, but when she still hasn’t woken up an hour later, he snags her plate and eats the cold eggs himself. The sleeping pills always make him ravenous, like he’s been on a bender, and he stacks the empty plates and pulls open the cookie tin.

The syringes sit in a nest of crumpled paper, an unappealing present. He tilts them back and forth, hypnotized by the slosh of fluid. The documentation on the flash drive had suggested quick, unstable mutations. He knows something about that. Not just a slow growth, an altering of cells, but a flexibility to the morphology. The potential for monstrous transformation...or maybe just really shitty warts. Hard to tell, but deeply unpleasant regardless. He’d need a lab to assess the liquid himself, and he’s not really sure how that’d work. Or really, if that’s even what she wants from him. She’d said consult, had insisted that it was a professional visit, and he’s not sure what to do with that.

Bruce puts the syringes back in the cookie tin. Something about them sitting out turns his stomach. Hulk shifts in the back of his skull, bothered by the images Bruce has dredged up, or maybe just skeeved by the needles.

 

When he can’t put it off any longer, he knocks on the half-wall. She’s rolled into his spot, winding the blanket around her shoulders, just a blonde tuft sticking out of the bed. She only sleeps like she’s wrung out laundry when it’s been a tough or long mission, or both. It twists at him, how alone she seems. How stretched thin.

He knocks again and says her name, and she opens her eyes, taking a moment to orient herself. She slowly sits up, blanket sliding off her shoulder. He holds up a ratty burnt umber bathrobe, all he’s got, and she gestures for him to set it on the bed.

Her gaze rakes him up and down, taking in his parka and boots.

“I’ve gotta go to work,” he says, apologetic. “There’s toast. I made a pot of coffee a few minutes ago.”

“I’m sorry,” she tugs the blankets from around her ankles, “I’ll be out--”

“Stay,” he says. In the morning light he finally can tell that the dark commas under her eyes are circles, since they’ve faded more than the bruises that are the only other color on her now that her hair’s bleached. “You can. If you want. If you need to. I left you my notes, not sure if that’s what you need, or want, but…”

She reaches for the bathrobe.

He rubs at his left hand. “You don’t have to go. It’s cold out. Roads are shit. They never salt out here.”

She doesn’t speak. He turns away to give her privacy to slip on the robe.

~*~

Natasha finds her boots by the heater next to a pair of his socks, thicker than hers. The rest of her clothes are in the dryer.

She sips coffee and reads his notes, and fails to remember the last time someone had done anything so simple yet tender for her. Something that wasn’t an exchange. She can’t remember the last conversation she’d had that wasn’t a negotiation. Even small talk on a bus, at a news kiosk, buying milk, these were all parts of various covers. She hadn’t been without any kind of handler or backup since she left the Red Room, and while she will always be able to survive on her own, she’s become sensitive to the icy disconnect from humanity that it entails. Six months was apparently all it took.

It didn’t matter before, but now her frame of reference is hopelessly skewed. She’s taken solace from what she does know: that Steve got the others off the Raft, that Barnes is in Wakanda, that Clint is safe with Laura and the kids, underground. That official charges have been threatened against all of them, but some of them more...officially than others. She hasn’t spoken to anyone but Hill, Carter, and Steve for eight months. 

Now Bruce. He’d opened his door, his home, his bed to her. His kindness. How had she forgotten how fucking kind he could be? Or had she stuffed that knowledge deep into the vault with all of the other pieces of him that she couldn’t let matter--his cold feet and wicked grin and self-doubt and sweet tooth and taste for shouty dramatic music?

She’s got bigger fish right now than the one that got away.

She should take Bruce’s notes, update Carter on how dirty Ross may be, solidify the extraction plan for Bernice. Fuck, maybe reach out to Stark, although there’s no guarantee that’s a good idea. He was so very, very angry at her. Betrayal is always personal, but Stark has dealt with it from so many sides she doesn’t blame him for rounding her actions up to it, even if he can surely see now that she’d done it to prevent more destruction.

She really should leave. She puts on her boots, her warm jeans, her parka. Packs her rucksack, but leaves it under the coffee table, instead pocketing the promotional bottle-opener laying on the kitchen counter. It’s a cutout of golden aluminum in the shape of a sandwich, with the address for a 24-hour deli in town called The Nosh Pit. 

The door has a bell on it, and the short order cook wears a cotton pill box chef hat in bright yellow, a sandwich with a happy face embroidered on the front. It’s been so long since she laughed it hurts her throat, cheeks cracking on a smile, but his hair sticking out around the sides of that ridiculous hat, it’s wonderful.

She slides onto a stool at the counter. A handful of people are scattered in the booths, unhurried, hungover, communing with their thick sandwiches.

She tips an imaginary cap to him, “Snazzy.”

“It’s a theme.”

“Is the theme you being a soda jerk in the 1950s?”

“Mary-Elise has a vision. Fortunately, she backs it up with a spectacular corned beef.” Bruce slides a cup of soup in front of her like a low-key dare.

She breathes in the steam. Vegetable barley; hot and fragrant, savory and chewy. “Good,” she says, and his fond smile makes her toes curl. She’d forgotten that too, to survive.

When she finishes the cup he sets another in front of her. “You on your way out?”

The earthy umami of mushroom wafts up. It’s creamy and decadent and perfect. She makes a choice. She begins, “You remember the amphibians?”

“Good times,” he says, spinning the wheel to the next ticket. He plucks at the bottom edge of the slip, holding it still for a second, and then reaches behind him for the rye. She knows he’s visually memorized the order, and he proceeds to make a grocery bag full of sandwiches. “What about them?”

“The case is ongoing.”

His thinking face appears, his fingers plucking autonomously at meats and cheeses. Natasha watches his hands work, the darting movements that look so fidgety but yield precision. She used to be mesmerized by his thumb on the plunger of his pipettor. His frames have slipped down his nose just like they would in his lab, focused on the series of motions plotted out before him.

She wants to push them up into his hair, push off that stupid hat and rub her thumbs against his temples, feel the tension drain from him at her touch. Tenderness. Instead she scrapes the spoon against the side of the bowl. “Coming to a conclusion, actually.”

“I see.” He brings her an avgolemono variation next. It’s so...Bruce. Out here in West Bumfuck Washington, making sandwiches and making friends and no damned car, but with a patron saint of lost causes who lets him develop tasting flights of soups.

“I helped a scientist fake her death,” she murmurs, as he packs a half a dozen sandwiches into a grocery bag and staples it shut, “to help her get the upper hand over a conglomerate that wanted to turn her research into a weapon.”

He hands the bag off to the front, and when he comes back he bends down to the reach-in fridge under the counter. The next cup is cold watermelon soup, crisp with ginger and mint and citrus.

“I think, maybe, she’s figured out how to determine the x-factor, how to isolate it, maybe trigger it in a less dramatic way than some of the...horror stories we’ve had cross our path. Or rather, that SHIELD had cross its path. When it did that kind of thing.”

Finally, he sets a fluted metal dish with a scoop of iridescent orange in front of her.

“Did you make this too?”

“Sherbet. And no.”

It’s so sweet, so bright and sour and unnatural. She licks the spoon. He leans in to clear the dish and he smells like corning spice and barley soup, a bit of honest sweat from the heat of the stove and the effort. It’s the most decadent thing he’s put in front of her.

“I’m trying very hard,” she says. Not to kill people. To do what’s right. To make the world a better, safer place. She says none of that, but from his eyes she knows he hears it all anyway.

“I know,” he says, and then the bell over the door rings as a hearty group comes in, recovering from New Year’s revels and fiending for fries and grease. “Happy New Year to that.”

~*~

Bruce brings pastrami on rye home for dinner just before midnight.

The surprise is that she’s still here, on his brown velvet couch, curled over a laptop. From the cant of her shoulders and the tension in her forehead, he suspects she’s been like that most of the day. She’s wrapped in the cheap bright throw he bought at a rummage sale back in the fall, one foot poking out, wearing the striped wool hiking socks he’d left out for her.

He sheds his jacket and hat, puts the sack of sandwiches on the table.

“I’m going to shower,” he says, trying not to acknowledge the pleasure and the nervous anticipation rising in him at her presence. She nods. 

He runs the water as hot as he can stand it. The walk home had been downright frigid. He scrubs at his arms, his face, wants somehow, to be clean for her. He shaves, pulls on fleece pajamas. He’s not stalling, exactly, but he’s also wary of how good it had felt, seeing her wrapped in a blanket on his couch. Coming home to her. All these domestic fantasies that he’d always shoved away like something dirty, and yet now, when all hopes of domesticity had been dashed, she’s curled into his little home like she fits there.

Seeing her in that blanket, he can feel Hulk echo the smile he can’t help. He’d only gone into the church rummage sale to get out of the wind, tearing through the newly bare trees on his walk home, and seen this hodgepodge of granny squares in a riot of oranges and reds, from rust to traffic cone. He’d been cold, and morose, and it had reminded him of the sun coming through her hair. Now she’s blonde, but the colors still suit her.

“I got it for two bucks,” he gestures, “the lady threw in a ball of yarn for free, to fix the holes. Wanted to teach me ladder stitch, but I already knew it from patching up superheroes.”

She fingers a line of running suture, a little pucker that hides a burn hole. He’d chosen a little ball of sage green, passing it off as a whim inspired by the departed fall colors, but he’s a sap with an eidetic memory, and he’s pleased to see in person that it does match her eyes. “Your eye for a deal will keep me warm, Doc.”

“I know you fit on the couch,” Bruce shakes his head. “But it’s gonna be too cold for that tonight.”

“It doesn’t get that damned cold in Washington.” She raises her chin.

So we’re playing the game where we don’t play games. Fine. “I think we’ll be warmer together. It’s your choice.”

“Are you asking?”

“Asking isn't pushing.” At her raised eyebrow he sighs, “and yes, I'm asking. No harm in asking.”

“Okay.”

He sits on the other end of the same couch, and tears into the sandwich, chewing pointedly at her until she closes the laptop and unwraps her own.

“So,” he props an elbow on the back of the couch, “how was work today?”

Natasha snorts.

“I’d volunteered for the double before I knew I had an out of town guest,” he says. “Most of the staff are youngsters with social lives, so working the holidays generates gratitude I can take advantage of later.”

“Careful,” she says, “that’s the kind of thinking that roped me into cooking lessons.”

She tells him about life at the Facility before it all collapsed, adapting her mission mindset to a mentoring one. That she’d asked Sam to teach her some basics of cooking as a gesture, a calculated show of her own weakness and lack of skill, a demonstration of the aptness she expected in her students, who gathered around to watch her struggle in the kitchen every Wednesday night...but that instead, Sam had taught her some basics of how to teach.

She tells him about her life now, freelance contract work very different from the last time she was out in the wind with only her own conscience to guide her.

“Body count is lower,” she says, eyes focused on the tag end of her pastrami.

Bruce has no illusions that it’s zero, and with the collection of knuckle-shaped bruises he saw when she stripped down the night before, he takes some comfort that even if she doesn’t start a fight, she can still swiftly end one. “Well, there’s that.”

She looks up finally, and sees something in his eyes that makes her relax, lets her polish off the sandwich and cheekily ask, “So, dear, how was work?”

He crumples their wrappers together and takes them to the trash. “Is that really the question you want to ask?”

She follows him, leaning against the wall and frankly studying him and his humble rental. “Maybe not _how_ , maybe _why_.”

“Why here?” Bruce sighs, “He likes cold rain. Asshole. But it was his turn to choose.”

“Noted, but that wasn’t what I meant. You’re not even wrapping ankles and treating fevers anymore. Your brilliance, your compassion...let’s just walk away from all of it and make sandwiches?”

“I’ve been experimenting with soups.” He fills a glass with water and hands it to her. Mary Elise’s pastrami is delicious, but the sodium sneaks up on a person. “I’m off the grid, Natasha. I’ve got enough paperwork to skate by, but it won’t survive scrutiny. I left all my qualifications in my other pants.”

She refills the glass and hands it to him. “How do you walk away from all of it, the secrets of the universe, the good you can do, and not go mad?”

“I never thought of it as walking away,” he says. “It’s about getting my mind right first.”

“Doing your penance.”

“Earning my own trust.”

A rueful smile curls one corner of her mouth, accusing, “Theorist.”

He shoots back, “Pragmatist.”

“Dreamer.”

“Dynamo.”

She turns her face away, but not before he sees the start of a blush, the troubled crinkle of her forehead. She clears her throat, “So how goes the parlay?”

Bruce walks over to his messenger bag and opens the flap, and the banked curiosity on her face confirms she’s already failed to find any kind of journal in his place. He doesn’t pull out the book, though, he pulls out the roll of faded high-tech fabric tucked at the bottom. “Put your boots on.”

~*~

Hulk lopes through the dark woods, shouldering between and under branches, a practiced duck and dodge that shelters her under his left arm the way a man flees through a crowded street holding his messenger bag close.

_Exhilarating_.

He’d called her a pragmatist, this mad scientist philosopher who never studies anything you can see with the naked eye, but she’s always been able to ground him into the physical plane, with touch, with words, with rope...and he’s always challenged her to fly, on faith, on emotion, on sheer contrary chutzpah.

Hulk slows and comes to a stop, and the snowy hush of the forest is punctuated by the gurgle and rush of a stream. He shifts her up from his hip, and she climbs around to sit on his shoulders as he takes a seat on a flat boulder at the edge of the water.

Their breath rises in puffs of fog, and the slash of night sky visible where the stream cuts through the canopy reveals the Milky Way.

Natasha slides her hands down along Hulk’s jawbone and lays her cheek on top of his head.

Later, on his mattress on the floor, Bruce sprawls on his back at the edge of sleep and she rolls half on her belly and fits her knee under his, contented by the pressure of the crook of his leg, the feel of his lungs expanding and contracting as she tucks her hand under his ribs.

He’s not asleep yet, his body still ramping up to the impressive heat he throws off when he’s really down, but he’s drowsy enough to let a slurry murmur leak out, “If you need anything,” he trails off like the sentiment is embarrassing, then throws his arm over his head and shifts closer, “You’re not alone, Natasha.”

She snuffles, “shut up” into the pillow, like saying _I love you_ , and burrows her knee further under his thigh.

~*~

The next morning they don’t say much over coffee and eggs, but Natasha follows him to the front door on his way out to work.

Bruce pauses, hands shoved in his coat pockets like he doesn’t trust them. She pulls her scarf from where it hangs with her jacket on the hook. It’s a subtle pattern in charcoal and silver, as much improvised weapon as accessory, but the wind is kicking up again. She slips it around the back of his neck and smooths the soft woolen fabric down his chest. She’s got work to do, and he wants her to go do that work because she wants to, because it makes her content. Because she does good work. He nods his chin at her, and tells her, “I really want to kiss you right now.”

She tilts her head and her knuckles tighten on his coat. “Just that?”

He smiles, “Just everywhere.”

She uses his coat to bring him down a few inches and gently bites at his chin, along his jaw, and he’s happy to let her hear him draw a quick breath, happy to let her push his back against the front door and press her body to his, and slide down to her knees.

“I'm gonna be late,” he says, instead of any of the other caveats or pronouncements he could blurt out. Endearments.

She smirks and unzips his work pants, says “I'll drive you,” and nuzzles his dick with her velvety cheek. It bobbles eagerly until she steadies it in one hand, the other snaking around his hip to knead the muscle of his ass.

She drives him all right, fast like a thrill-seeker, chuffing when he shudders with the sudden flood of hot wet pleasure, answering his gasps with contented moans that thrum into him and, oh, he is a weak man who might not be that late for work after all if she keeps this up.

Natasha drops into a slower gear, a sinuous twist in her grip and her tongue, watching him like her eyes are also sucking him in. He might not show up at all, fuck it, let Dom cover, drag her back into bed… He combs shaking fingers through her weird blonde hair, and she cuffs his wrist, still sucking, and pins it to the door with a thump. He whines. 

With a departing squeeze, her hand travels out of his pants and down his thigh, and she nudges that foot forward between her own knees. He shifts, solid stance braced on the cold front door behind him.

She rises up and starts grinding against his shin.

The heat of her is palpable through his heavy canvas pants and her own jeans, the rolling snap to her motion instantly recognizable as being imminently close to coming.

“Oh,” Bruce says, turning his wrist in her grip to hold her forearm in turn, “please, please…”

She pulls off, still grinding, and pants, “Please what?”

“Yes, please,” he cups the back of her neck as she noses against his hip, coasting on the high color in her cheeks, her firm hand working his cock and her iron grip on his wrist.

He feels her jerk, feels the tremor of climax run from her body up into his like high-voltage current.

She laughs into the skin of his belly.

He pulls her up on trembling legs. She meets his eyes for a long beat and then slaps his cheek. He wraps his arms around her, and she melts against him and lays a reverent kiss on the side of his throat.

An hour later she's gone.


	14. Reunion Tour

### Reunion Tour

~*~

_All I thought I wanted was a_

_Front door_

_All I thought I wanted was a_

_Place in the country_

_Now I realize I want so much more_

_Some I love, but you I adore_

_\-- **Adam Ant**_

~*~

#### San Bernardino, CA - Jan 5th

This is the second time Natasha has watched movers hauling Bernice’s furniture out to a truck.

A neighbor stops to inquire, his terrier vibrating at the end of the leash. The sole white man walks over. He displays a salesman's bonhomie, letting the dog snuffle his boots as he chats with the neighbor.

The man conveys sympathetic puzzlement. The neighbor frowns, reaches down to pat his dog. The man sets down Bernice's iron plant stand, the heaviest thing he's carried so far despite his broad back and neck, and digs into his pocket.

The neighbor takes polite steps out of the way of the oncoming sofa bed, while the man in charge offers the dog a biscuit. The laborers go around the man, even their eyes avoiding him.

This time the muscle isn't just movers, but also a mercenary.

Bernice isn’t supervising because she’s still packing her bags in Osaka, oblivious to the fact her condo is being emptied and a false trail being laid. This time, she isn’t in on Akesotech’s plans to disappear her. This time, it’s for keeps.

They’re snipping loose ends, and while she’s had a good run selling the cover of moral flexibility and plausibly deniable sabotage, Bernice is a loose end they don’t want walking around getting qualms. Or being head-hunted by competition.

The extraction timetable Natasha had outlined is now thrown out the window. And she’d so carefully weighted the corpse, hoping it would buy her until spring. Sometimes the only way you find out there’s a dead man switch involved is when it’s tripped. Needs must, however. Right now she needs all the favors she can pull, needs all hands on deck to secure the evidence stashed in locations across the United States, as well as her key whistleblower and witness.

She dials Sharon.

  


#### Bellingham, WA - Jan 5th

“Got a hot date?” Mary-Elise rubs another handful of corning spice into the back of a brisket, her black hair gathered under a paper hair net.

Bruce gives her a studied look of guileless innocence and reaches for a bar towel to wipe off the counter. 

She gestures with her shoulder. “Keep mooning at your phone. Didn’t even know you had one.”

It’s carelessness on his part, or maybe too much care. Natasha’s been gone a handful of days and this morning he’d sent her a text, which he’d agonized over like a lovesick teenager. How does one convey _I meant what I said about being there if you need me, despite this weird delicate thing where we have chronic coded conversations about violations of trust, or grief, or love, or autonomy, but you know, I really need you to know that I need you to be okay. Okay_?

It had taken him nearly an hour to settle on, _Hey_.

Bruce slips his phone in a back pocket, washes his hands, and sees Dom offering an order ticket and a smirk.

“Is it soup lady?”

Bruce tugs the ticket but Dom doesn't let go. “And if it is?”

“Did you offer her the tossed salad, too?” Dom waggles his eyebrows.

“She's, uh,” Bruce stutters, “she's ordered widely off the menu.”

Dom offers a dap.

He doesn’t check the phone again until he gets home that night. No words, just a photo of a bag of Oreos that look like they’ve been run over.

It feels cheeky, but as the hours pass he can’t make himself wave it off. He looks at the tire tracks across the package and thinks about Natasha pouring vodka in her stocking feet after the memorial, so smooth and charming, and so brittle.

It occurs to him that her showing up for a consult in the first place was an experiment with _asking_. Oblique and coded, but still an ask, with all that implies about need and vulnerability.

He doesn’t ponder and second-guess this time, he quickly taps out, _ask me anything_.

Not ten minutes later there’s a flurry of responses, starting with a picture. The woman is in her early sixties, with a fluff of iron grey hair and kind eyes punctuated by lines from habitual concentration. He knows the face, from symposia, from a group picture that used to sit on Betty’s desk from her first post-doc. The disgraced but apparently not yet dead Dr. Bernice Kikkert.

_Can you pick someone up at the airport?_  
_JAL JL 60 KIX TO LAX 11:45AM PST JAN 6_  
_She has a ride from work; DON’T let her go with that ride_  
_Tell her Harry Limes sent you_

Two states away. And he has no car.

He sighs, and calls Pepper. He doesn’t expect the conversation to go well, exactly, but he’s still surprised to be yelled at.

“You’re calling me to help you with _a ride_?”

“Well--”

Pepper growls, “Hold on, I’m buying you a plane ticket right now--”

“I can’t go through TSA with my ID, Pepper, I have to drive down.”

“Oh my god, you used to tell me this about him and I didn’t believe you.”

“Tell you what--?”

“Now you see?” Another voice cuts in.

Bruce startles. “Tony?”

“At first I thought it had to do with the whole transformation thing--neither of them have the best handle on how much space they take up--but I suspect it’s because he’s always thinking either very large or very small--physicists, you know? Totally whacked sense of scale.”

“Hey--”

“Oh like you can talk, Mr. Stark.” Pepper exhales into the phone mic, exasperated and fond. “Do you have any way to get Bruce to LAX ASAP? I have the SI plane with me in Rome.”

“Guys--”

“I can be there in fifteen hours, unless this is for some romantic gesture where a proxy won’t serve.”

“Tony--”

“You’re being awfully profligate with your romantic gestures,” Pepper chides, “Is this really the example you should be setting for your apprentice Avenger, Tony?”

“KNOCK IT OFF, ALREADY.”

The line goes silent.

Pepper finally speaks, “FRIDAY please convey to Mr. Stark that no one wants him flying across the Pacific right now. Bruce, we’ll get you what you need. Give me an hour, if you’ve got it to spare.”

She makes sure Tony isn’t on the line, then says, “He misses you.” She waits a beat, but doesn’t add her own sentiments. Instead, she asks, “Happy is in Malibu, we can send him if that’d be easier?”

Of course it would be easier, but that’s not what Pepper's asking. “Kikkert will know me, know I’m Natasha’s representative. I need to go.”

“Speaking of romantic gestures…”

Bruce doesn’t deny it.

~*~

As soon as Bruce gives FRIDAY access to an encrypted tunnel to one of his VPNs, a note opens on his laptop.

It’s a bloodless text file, but he knows Natasha wrote it.

Great, she’d been hiding Easter eggs in his electronics. The text directs him to an anonymized server. He logs on only to find a bare directory of porn clips...but the skew of terms catches his eye. A highlight reel of their encounters, devoid of any slut terminology. He cautiously clicks on the first file, _giggly_redhead_gets_eaten_out._

A script window opens, and he scoots the cursor toward it frantically before he can even read it--the last thing he needs is shit about computer security from Tony when they’re in crisis mode--but then he sees it’s a decryption window. The very shapes of the message paragraphs as it processes are familiar from watching Natasha work for hours in the tactical room.

Genetic manipulation protocols fan out on the screen, and he whistles.

He dissects the video clip it’s hiding in. Without Natasha’s decryption program already seeded on his laptop, it would appear as a blurred couple seconds of maybe a butt cheek, with an infectious looking pop-up to explain the size of the file.

Bruce clicks on the next file, _shibari_bear_takes_it_pretty_. Akesotech financials.

He works down the list, pulling out evidence on Akesotech going back years, and implicating several other firms and international entities. There are scans of documents, and locations for the cached originals at law offices, safe deposit boxes, and...sperm banks.

Bruce recalls the padded thud of a styrofoam cooler full of flash frozen frog hitting his lab bench. Physical evidence with third party dates for when it went into cold storage.

Bruce sets the phone down, walks into the kitchen, and leans his hands on the sinkboard. He makes himself a cup of tea and watches it cool in the cup, undrunk, before he dumps it.

As he packs, he reaches out to Helen Cho. She might be happy to find out Kikkert is still alive, but more importantly, she’ll see things in this data that Bruce won’t even know to look for.

Several hours later Bruce's fret is tipped toward panic by a car horn right outside his house. Through a crack in the blinds he sees an ancient Prius, the driver hunched over the wheel.

Just then a text pings through his phone from Pepper: _Hill made some calls._ _Hope you don’t mind small aircraft. His name is Jim._

Jim sports massive sideburns, and Bruce almost says, _Don’t I know you?_ but then thinks better of it. The guy drives with his meaty forearm wrapped over the steering wheel and shuts down small talk by only replying in grunts.

The small airstrip has all the hallmarks of a private field, as does the Cessna. Bruce hates twin-cylinder planes. Of course, he also hates commercial airliners. Pretty much, Bruce just hates flying. He tries to distract himself with gratitude. “Thank you for the ride,” he ventures, ”rides?” 

“Don’t bother, bub,” Jim doesn't pause in his pre-flight check. “I’m not doing a favor; Stark’s paying me through the nose. And I owe Hill.” His eyes twinkle. “I don’t mind owing Hill.”

“You should maybe know I’m a nervous flyer,” Bruce straps in, clutching his bag.

At that, Jim does look at Bruce. “Oh I know who you are.”

It’s a challenge, but not to Bruce. His neck prickles as Hulk takes an interest. 

“Hold on,” Jim says, the only warning he gives before take off.

Hulk grumbles, an inside scuffed feeling, unimpressed with the bumpy flight. Jim’s not a great pilot, and Hulk starts pawing at Bruce’s skull like a dog scratching at the door.

“Fuck you,” Bruce mumbles. “You’re just as bad.”

They hit a patch of turbulence that rocks them back and forth and Hulk growls, makes their hands antsy to grab the controls.

“Look asshole, planes can't move like two ton gamma monsters. Plus, the last time you flew you crashed us into the goddamned Pacific.”

The other guy sulks, but Bruce keeps an eye on Jim as a gesture of goodwill.

When they land at Van Nuys field, Bruce’s knees are weak but his eyes are still brown.

Jim tosses his bag on to the tarmac, points towards the FlyAway bus, and thumbs over his shoulder. “You get to LAX on that. Unless you or the big guy want to hit the strip clubs in the Valley with me? Or get Lebanese.”

Bruce swallows. “Thanks, but no. And, um, really, thank you for the lift.”

Jim shakes his head. “Like I said, I know who you are, and I’m always happy to gouge Stark. Say hi to Potts for me.” 

Then he winks. “Or any other redheads you run into.”

  


#### Los Angeles, CA - Jan 6th

Bruce has Pepper to thank for the escort through security to meet Bernice at the gate. “ _My former assistant manages customer relations for Delta’s International division,_ ” she’d left a voicemail while he'd been deep breathing through a bouncy landing. “ _It’s in the same terminal. She’ll get you through_.”

Bernice is half a head shorter than most of the deplaning crowd, but he recognizes her hair and dark orange eyeglass frames. He’s had enough of Natasha’s training and his own experience eluding pursuit to spot three likely agents milling around like they just got off a plane.

Bernice recognizes Bruce in spite of his ball cap, but aside from a slight widening of her eyes she doesn’t betray surprise, just heads over and wraps him in a hug to hiss in his ear, “Where the fuck is Romanoff?” She steps back with a bright false smile and a squeal. “Oh my god, it’s been ages! Are you arriving or departing?”

“Arriving,” he says, hoisting his backpack up. “Seattle. Are you heading to baggage?” 

She falls into step, and asks, “What were you doing up there?”

“Studying starfish,” he says, “With Professor Limes.”

Bruce puts two fingers on her arm to steer her behind a large, boisterous South Indian family with a lot of luggage, who are in turn trying to navigate around bickering ten year old blond twins flanking their mother in the middle of the terminal walkway. He’d bet money one of them is named Connor. Maybe both. 

The female agent is failing to keep up and stay inconspicuous; her roller bag is empty and too light, and keeps tipping over when she speeds up.

Fuck. Bruce isn't meant for espionage. Dr. Kikkert looks at him side-eyed, and pushes him into the ladies room.

“Where the hell is Romanoff?” She digs a sweater out of her backpack. It’s big and grey and cable-knit, oversized like a security blanket.

“We’ve gotta go.”

She hands him the sweater and he puts it on, pocketing his glasses. She stashes his ball cap and wraps a cotton scarf around her head, an obvious souvenir, but a muted navy wave pattern.

“Timeline’s moved up.” He’s itchy with nerves, hands icy when he scratches at his forearms. “I don’t know a lot more. Just that you’re in danger, and we need to move.”

Bernice looks hard at him. “You cut and run on Elizabeth. I should trust you, now?”

“Natasha sent me. She trusts me to get you where you need to go.”

She considers him, displeased, but finally picks up her tote, “Fine.”

He tries to hide his relief. “Follow me.”

He walks out of the ladies’ room, shuffling in feigned embarrassment. They’re in luck; the Connors are fistfighting, their frazzled mother trying to pull them apart. The South Indian mama is stepping in to offer assistance, while the papa scolds their own kids for egging the twins on.

A golf cart rolls up, pointedly avoiding the tween slugfest, driven by the manager who slipped Bruce to the gates. He gestures to Bernice to get on. They’re cruising past baggage claim before anyone notices, and they keep on sailing, abandoning her checked bags since her notes are in her carry-on anyway. The manager drives the cart right across the access road and into a short term parking lot.

They pull up behind a 70’s coupe, already running, which looks small with Happy Hogan leaning against it. The black paint job is shinier than patent leather, the only defacement an unweathered _Stark Expo ‘74_ bumper sticker.

“Boss said to drop off one of the Audis.” Happy takes the carry-on bag from Bruce and nods hello to Bernice, “Ma’am.”

“We’re driving?” She peers up at Happy, “I thought we needed to get away from here pronto?”

“All the way to New York, but you can’t get back on a plane because you’re flagged.”

Bruce squints toward the runways, “Jim’s not an option?”

“Small aircraft, there’s too much chance for foul play.” Happy looks anything but. “Trust me, guys like this don’t care if they take out a few houses shooting you down. That's why Jim’s flying decoy over the desert already.”

She peers at the tomato red interior and sucks her teeth. “Pretty, but will she make it over the Rockies?”

Happy slams the trunk. “What, you think you’re looking at a stock car, here? Turbo boost V8, video interface, et cetera. And there’s some necessaries in the glovebox.”

Necessaries turn out to be an envelope of cash, two burner phones, and a black AmEx. Bruce rolls his eyes. It’s not like they’ll be able to use it. The video interface is a round convex screen set into the thin lip of the dash, but it’s contemporaneous technology, and the only thing the buttons next to it do are turn off the 8-track player set under the console.

It’s Dean Martin’s _Return to Me_. The cassette cannot be dislodged from the player, and it only stays off for about twenty minutes before the endless loop of Italian-American love songs whirrs back to life and Dean picks up crooning where he left off.

  


#### Sarasota, FL - Jan 6th

Carter passes Agent Nehal's encrypted file along to Romanoff: _Package intercepted at LAX, intervention required. No casualties. Someone needs to give the Johansson twins a medal. No eyes on honeydew or beaker. Enemy agents subdued in Bradley Terminal family restroom._

In a balmy parking garage, Natasha wraps her coat around a liquid nitrogen vapor tank shaped like a squat thermos, and sets it into the half-filled banker box she’d already retrieved from a Bradenton law office. She clicks the trunk shut, starts the car, and sees a text on her phone from a contact labeled _Auntie Em_. Two bee emojis and a gold star. Maria must be downright giddy to be using what she usually derided as ‘the puffy stickers of the internet’.

Natasha texts back an alligator, and heads for the airport in Tampa.

By the time she gets there Carter, the _Good Witch of the North,_ has changed her flight destination from Pittsburgh to Atlanta, proceeding on to Boston, then to New York. Which means Bernice is now picking up the evidence caches in Detroit, Cleveland and Pittsburgh. Meanwhile, Pepper and Tony are hustling senators and media, and Maria and Sharon are juggling logistics and Feds, building a case not only against Akesotech, but the whole web of investors and clientele.

As the plane takes off, Natasha ponders two testy scientists traveling overland through the Rust Belt, and hopes they both arrive in one piece.

  


#### Arrolime, NV - Jan 6th

Once they leave Las Vegas, the porthole in the dash comes to life.

Bernice startles awake with a swear.

The screen shows a tight closeup of Tony’s face, tinted amber. “I apologize, When I said, ’take the one of the Audis,’ I thought I was clear that he bring you a fast one from this century, not the one he was okay with losing.”

“I can’t go fast and risk getting pulled over anyway. I just wish it had snow tires.”

“My car collection is in Malibu, why the hell would I need snow tires?”

“Point taken. Quick question, are you calling from your suit?”

“International flights are boring, am I right, Dr. Kikkert?”

“Oh, my turn!” Bernice shifts in her seat. “I just need to know if the seats are heated or is that something more ominous?”

“What’s ominous is that you’re in my parents’ date night coupe.”

“A two-seater?” Bernice wrinkles her nose, “Really?”

“Again, Malibu. You’re not confined to huddling inside for warmth at makeout point.”

Bruce deadpans, “Gross.”

“What's gross is that the 8-track player has a refractory period.” Bernice adds, “Which I now suspect is neither coincidence nor bad design.”

Tony shudders and changes the topic. “So here’s the thing, situation’s evolving, We need you to take the northern route and pick up the Denver cache in person.”

“Denver docs and specimens are population assays,” Bernice straightens as much as she can in the bucket seats, “It was a small feasibility project, sweeps for targeted alleles and extrapolating family trees, but the dataset was enormous--pirated Ancestry.com data. Requisitioned by the Army, out of White Sands.”

Of course, Bruce thinks. Fucking why not?

“Akesotech wants to provide the mutation,” Bernice says. “The government will provide the screenings.”

“Why try to harness powered individuals, when you can create your own?” Tony makes a noise in the back of his throat. “Forget mutants and their unpredictability, why bother with human rights and free will, Pick and choose what and who you want, like a buffet.”

“Yes,” Bernice says. “The data’s cross-referenced with medical records, genetic screenings, those DNA kits people send away for. Sure it’s illegal, but who’s going to know?”

They’d have the genie _and_ the bottle. Full-scale tailored interventions, that’s what they hope to bring to market.

“That’s pretty fucked up,” Tony agrees.

“It’s venal, and evil, a corruption of what my work could do to help people,” Bernice says. “And I’m done letting it happen.”

The porthole screen goes dark, and they drive a few miles in sober silence.

“If there had been genetic screening available, I would not have been born in the first place.” Bruce begins slowly.

Bernice adjusts the sun visor to give him shade, and it feels a bit like grace after driving for five hours into the desert.

“I don’t have the mutant gene, but...my father was convinced that the gamma radiation he worked with damaged his contribution. He wasn’t technically wrong. My mom convinced him long enough for me to be born, she wanted me, but…” Brian never let go of the delusion that his son was inhuman, a hyper-intelligent freak, and had treated him accordingly. Brian was an actual monster, but the Hulk was arguably a child born of anti-mutant rage.

Bernice looks out at the receding concrete, development petering out as they swing north. “When I fixed my lungs, I told myself it was for the stamina, the ability to keep up, to do what I knew needed to be done. That I was putting my money where my mouth was, trusting my work.”

“The tastiest kool-aid is the kind you make yourself.”

She scoffs, bitter and self-mocking in a way that’s entirely too familiar, “Oh yeah.”

“It can still help people, your work.” Bruce offers, “Knives are weapons you can cook with.”

“And doctors bury their mistakes.”

  


#### Atlanta, GA - Jan 6th

The Xytek corporate office reflects its status as the oldest sperm bank in the country, smooth white stone and mirrored glass outside, tasteful upholstery inside. Bernice served two terms on the board; this is the first place she stored evidence. It’s not impossible to break into, but with security and foot traffic, and her looming timeline, Natasha's best choice is to walk in the front door.

Her ID is appropriately aged around the edges, and when scanned calls up the profile of Dr. Nadia Russo, MD, Dr. P.H., Hematology and Infectious Diseases, representative from the FDA.

The head of Internal Communications meets her, a tall black woman with a shrewd gaze and a perfectly fitted red dress. “While we are always available to any agency or governing body, it is a little unusual. Particularly this late in the day,” Dr. Williams chastises gently. “We’re at a shift change for clinicians.”

A part of Natasha’s brain makes careful note of the tailoring and accessories, the warm smile like a velvet glove over the clinical appraisal of her credentials and request for spot inspection. Nadia mirrors just enough of that precision and elegant formality back, to help establish a rapport.

“We received a report from a potential donor in Athens, it brought up questions about storage procedures. I suspect it was simply a clinician having an off day, but,” Natasha laces her bland gaze with actual fatigue. “Your reputation is sterling, but FDA can’t play favorites.”

Dr. Williams hums, giving the paperwork one more glance, then pulls up operating procedures, checklists, and case files that Nat has memorized but pretends to choose at random.

She gloves up and observes procedures in two different labs. It’s easy enough to guide the tech to the specific sample, to examine the seal on the vial, to swap it for another vial during a moment’s inattention. The tech’s thick gloves keep her from feeling the difference in temperature, and Dr. Williams is preoccupied trying to read her inspection notes upside down.

Natasha slips the vial into the thermal pouch in her pocket. This is the tricky part: not losing focus as she wraps up the inspection and makes a believable exit quickly enough to get the sample into the vapor tank in the car before it degrades.

  


#### Silt, CO - Jan 7th

Tony calls again as they get to the Western Slope of the Rockies. Bruce answers, since Bernice has been driving this leg into the wee hours of the morning.

"Where's Nat?” Her last communique a day ago was an airplane icon, a peach, a thumbs up, and a check mark. His reply of a cactus and two question marks was his best attempt at being reassuring yet vague, and it had gone unanswered since.

"Nat's on a scavenger hunt for incriminating evidence.” Stark’s features are distorted by the convex viewscreen, or maybe it’s the suit’s internal cam lens. It’s like talking to a fish with a goatee. “ _Real_ incriminating evidence. Not the box she left in her closet labeled 'incriminating evidence' that turned out to be a cornucopia of sex toys and enough rope to rig a schooner. I kinda dug the whole 'swords into plowshares' vibe you guys had going."

"Did you forget Dr. Kikkert’s in the car?" Bruce clears his throat, "Little pitchers have big ears."

“Short jokes?” She chuckles. “Isn’t that beneath you, Dr. Banner?”

“Touche,” Tony says, “Still have boxes of your stuff, too, you know, Bruce.”

He sighs, “I might need that suit, if you can dig it out.”

“Lemme text the kid, he’s already grabbing stuff out of storage at the Facility, including that frog you left in the lab freezer.”

“There’s a kid?”

“You know how when people break up, sometimes they get a puppy? Never mind,” he waves it off, “long story.”

“You’ve got a minion, Nat’s on a sperm bank robbery spree--what the fuck have you people been doing while I was away?”

“Dealing, Bruce. We’ve all been dealing.”

  


#### Boston, MA - Jan 7th

“Ross is looking for you,” Sharon says. 

Natasha’s driver’s license says Nina Rappaport, and the wig is longer but still matches the dark brown hair color in the photo. She holds the phone to her ear, and says, “It’s in the fridge honey, behind the milk.”

“He’s sent staff to our office twice today, and it’s not just detainment. There are shoot on sight orders, Natasha.”

“Just a second, babe, hold on.”

She hands the TSA agent her license, hovers the phone over the scanner. 

When she’s through, Sharon says, “He’ll have extra security measures in place soon, you’re going to have to drive down from there.”

“Can you open it up?” Natasha says, trusting Sharon to understand she means exposing Ross sooner rather than later. “Do we have enough?” 

“Crates of evidence, but nothing we can release that’ll do more than make him look bad, and he’s proven kind of impervious to that. We need to keep the juicy stuff for the federal prosecutors so we don’t hobble their investigations, or compromise their case. And we have to assume these assholes have the full scoop on Kikkert, and are doing damage control. Your job is to secure as many of the samples as possible.”

“Well, I’ll swing by the store, then.” Shit. All this risk and it might not blow the lid off anything; it’s going to be a struggle just to keep ahead of the spin.

Natasha pulls her bag behind her, careful and confident in her heels as her mind reels and recalculates. Nina is a pharmacy rep with a suitcase of samples and a husband at home making dinner. Natasha is exiting an airport one step ahead of an all points bulletin and trigger happy mercs.

Carter has gone quiet, which means there’s another shoe. She teases with a grin, “You’re suddenly silent, babe, what’s wrong?”

“There’s something else,” Sharon says. “One of Ross’s staffers used to work on the Triskelion, and Maria’s been able to flip him. Turns out Ross has been keeping a list, dossiers of enhanced people. Superheroes, people of interest. You’re on it, Banner, Stark, Rogers, those people in Harlem and Hell’s Kitchen. A place called The Workshop. Some kid in Jersey. A...squirrel? That can’t be right. But there are more, and it lists powers, abilities, history. It’s...after Project Insight, I’m really not fond of lists like this.”

Neither is she.

  


#### Denver, CO - Jan 7th

They leave the Audi in long-term parking at the Denver airport, switching to a late model Jeep Wrangler that Hill had managed to leave for them. It’s dirty, but has a fresh set of burner phones and cash envelope in the glove box, and a brand new air freshener hanging from the rear view mirror.

It’s shaped like Hulk. It smells like pine.

Bernice can barely toe the clutch, but she knows where she’s going in Denver so she manages. They wait another hour for the medical office to open, and once it does Bernice takes her sweet time coming back out. There’s weather predicted across the midwest and Bruce can feel the clock ticking in the back of his head.

“Pepper’s set up the press conference,” Tony says on speakerphone. “I can handle all this, get Romanoff and Kikkert what they need.”

Bruce bites his lip and eyes the sky and the flat, expansive landscape, both gray even with the sun up. “Even though you’re still angry at her?”

It’s never stopped Tony. He knows that. Because this isn’t about Natasha, but about the people who love her, and Tony is part of that group, sense of betrayal or no.

“Romanoff isn’t fucking around,” he says. “I won’t let any of you drown out there.” He hangs up.

Halfway across Kansas, Bernice sets her feet up on the dash. Her socks have reindeer on them. “Your friends have a lot of faith in you. And, I suppose, in me. That I’m not just a crank looking to cop a plea on my ethics violations.”

“Please,” Bruce says, “if we were a club, our jackets would say _Bad Ideas Start Here_.”

“I can’t actually picture Stark in a motorcycle jacket.”

“No. Satin, like the Pink Ladies.”

“Oh yeah, that works for all of us, I think.” She snorts, the first time it’s felt like she’s laughing with him, instead of at him. “We’ll save the leather for Nat, she can pull it off.”

This is the longest Bruce has been behind the wheel, probably ever, and after almost a decade of minimal driving, it’s wreaking havoc. His back hurts. His ass hurts. His wrist and shoulder and calf and head hurt. He’s worried about Natasha. He’s worried about himself, about Bernice. He shifts his spine, sends thoughts of cold rain to the other guy, and decides to broach a delicate subject.

“You brought up Betty, back at the airport.” It’s not like the guilt has ever left him, but he has a different perspective on all of it now. “I never wanted to hurt her.”

“I bet that didn’t count for much,” she says, less pissy than he’d expected.

“I don’t imagine it did,” he says, “but I couldn’t...stay. Then.”

“You were professional partners as well as romantic partners. That’s always a risk. I never encouraged my students to fuck anyone they might want to collaborate with.”

“Well, Betty always had a mind of her own.”

“It’s why I took her on as a grad student. And despite the professional setbacks when you went all green and smashy, she's still made a name for herself.”

The pride Bruce feels is authentic, and unlike so many other feelings about the professional life he left behind, untinged by envy or regret. “Yes,” he says. “She has.”

Bernice cocks her head, and he thinks, perhaps, it’s approval.

  


#### Undisclosed Location outside Ithaca, NY - Jan 7th

“I think it's a bad idea, Mr, Stark.”

“If it’s on the list, pull it.”

"I really _really_ don't think I can go into Black Widow's room, sir.”

“I’m keying you in remotely right now. Think of it as homage by espionage.”

“It wasn’t--I mean, yeah, there’s the issue of respect and privacy, but I’m also concerned about--”

“Kid, there’s no need to be concerned about area denial weapons in that part of the facility--”

“Hey, that’s awfully specific--”

"Think of her as the spider from the Misunderstood Spider meme, she’s actually quite benevolent when people aren’t trying to squash her with a book."

"I don't want to say you're lying, sir. But I don't think that your face is supposed to do that when your telling the truth."

  


#### Lawrence, KS - Jan 7th

The Target is remarkably busy for a midweek afternoon in January. Families ranging from sullen to cranky mill about with baskets of school supplies and frozen dinners and bananas. Bruce hasn't been in a Target in years. The layout throws him, and he stands dazed in the dollar section while Bernice makes a beeline for the candy aisle.

Maybe he’s disoriented by the fluorescents, the lack of sleep, or the out of body sensation that comes with driving cross-country. He can still feel the tires vibrating, see white lane lines pulse in his perpheral vision. More than anything else, it convinces him Bernice needs to drive for a while.

Bruce isn't an engineer, but having a concrete problem to fix kickstarts his feet if not his brain.

He heads towards housewares in a daze, walking by an entire quadrant of kids clothing with the team’s faces sprawled across them. He hasn't been sentimental about leaving, hasn't allowed himself, but he can barely look at the tiny pajamas with Tony, Cap, Thor...and the other guy. Except he can’t turn away, his hand brushing over a small hoodie with a shield in the center.

Bernice rounds the corner with a rubber door stopper in one hand and a pair of women's briefs in the other, the black widow hourglass stamped in the center. She says, "These come in XL if you want a pair.”

He's growing fond of Bernice, but he still may leave her in this Target. If he weren't so tired that he feels like a walking risk assessment, he'd really take it under advisement. As it is, he needs to make sure she can work the clutch and not be brained by the airbag if she crashes.

"We need a drill and some screws," he says, and pulls his hand away from the hoodie.

"Don't forget the snack mix," she calls, as he veers toward batteries and repair.

Their haul ends up including a bathmat, a quad-rule notebook, and a travel hand sanitizer in a rubber frog holder. Plus a butter dish, and black widow underwear in three sizes. Because you just never know.

  


#### Killingly, CT - Jan 8th

Getting the goods was a breeze.

Getting out of Boston takes blood.

Some it it’s Natasha’s.

  


#### Detroit, MI - Jan 8th

Rolling through Chicago at three on the morning was a lucky break, which they’re paying for by rattling through Detroit with the morning rush hour. You’d think going slower would make the chuck holes easier to avoid, but everything’s covered in a thick slush, so good luck with that. Bruce’s been blasting opera to keep on an even keel.

Bernice shouts over the soaring aria, “I miss Dean Martin!” 

“I miss _roads_.” His knuckles are white on the steering wheel. “I think part of this bridge may have fallen into the river.”

“Pull over,” Bernice knocks her knuckles on the passenger window, “let me drive while you still fit in the fucking car.”

She’s wrong, but she does have a point. Opera usually makes Hulk sleepy, but it’s only winding them both up right now. Bruce takes the off-ramp at speed.

They stretch their legs in a White Castle parking lot, but it doesn’t take long for Bruce to settle and get back into the jeep out of the cold. With the engine off, wet puffs of snow plopping onto the windshield, it’s almost peaceful. Until Bernice brings back a sack of tiny oniony cheeseburgers.

Bruce hadn’t realized the place was open this early in the morning. It seems an unwise choice for breakfast, but then again, it’s not like he hasn’t cooked for the post-bar-crawl crowd. And it’s the healthiest thing he’s seen her eat so far.

She folds an empty burger box and pulls out another. “You drive like Mr. Magoo.” 

“Untrue, and also dated. I drive like a fugitive from justice with a co-pilot prone to road rage. That’s something you really don’t want to see.” In counterpoint his stomach growls audibly.

“I don’t know,” she says dreamily, offering the open sack. “I have a number of questions for him. Plus, I got an amazing holographic trading card of him in Japan. I was hoping he’d sign it.”

Bruce pulls out a burger. “He’s got crappy penmanship.”

“He’s kind of a big deal,” she says with a smirk, and then lifts a very pointed eyebrow. “Of course, once upon a time, so were you.”

“Hah.” He flicks the cardboard Hulk hanging from the mirror.

Bernice shakes a bag of fries at him. He’s slowing down on the burgers, feeling the exhaustion crash coming fast. She offers, “I guess NASA was right, you’re both okay.”

“He could survive in space, I think,” Bruce muses. “Or rather, I have no reason to assume he wouldn’t, even though he’s organic. He utilizes oxygen, but evidence suggests he can survive for long periods on the small amount he can pull from seawater, so...”

“That’s at least one twentieth of average human metabolism,” she shakes her head.

He has to admit it’s gratifying to finally talk about these things with someone who grasps the bizarre physiology involved, though her perspective isn’t as rigorous as he’d like.

“Heat loss might be an issue, especially with cellular respiration suppressed. Pants are always a problem, aren’t they?”

Bruce shifts his sore ass. He usually doesn’t wear anything under his pants because it’s just more fabric to rip through, but with long hours in the car and the prospect of running, he’s donned boxer briefs as a cushiony layer. He misses the freedom, though. “I don’t think lack of pants bothers him.”

“Nor should it.”

“Seriously?”

“He’s a violation of the laws of physics, but he’s also an agent of chaotic good. He’s invulnerable, indestructible. He’s an unknown. He’s monstrous and beautiful. Miraculous.”

Bruce doesn’t feel like he can look at her; it’s no easier to hear, detente or not. He concedes, “Maybe less of a monster than I’ve treated him as.”

“Heroic,” she agrees, then adds reluctantly, “and you, also. Perhaps.”

“Not alone.”

“Romanoff.”

“In part.”

“This is just something she does, isn’t it? Helps scientists metamorphose into heroes,” Bernice has gone serious, her eyes distant, “A combination of midwifery and blacksmithing.”

“I’ve been told,” Bruce admits, “by a reliable source, that when she cares about someone, they become a project.” By Clint, who originally brought her in, and could Bruce have been more oblivious about the impact of her best friend’s retirement on her? Not to mention the donnybrook at the airport, and the free-for-all backstabbing that followed.

“It must be terrifying,” Bernice says, “to be loved like that.”

Bruce contemplates a number of responses, from flippant to denial. He goes with honesty. “Terrifying. Exhilarating. Humbling.”

“Hard to be worthy of the effort,” Bernice says, “to rise to the challenge.”

“Is that philosophy or another dick joke?”

“Why can’t it be both?”

“No wonder she likes you.”

Bernice crumples the bags. “I’m more fun since the great experiment. You inject yourself with a potentially fatal substance in an effort to cure your chronic illness, and suddenly any other risk is a laugh riot.”

“I’m not sure that’s been my experience.”

“Your loss.” She adds, “Then again, perhaps there were unexpected side effects to my funny bone.”

  


#### Middletown, CT - Jan 8th

Natasha’s hunkered down blending cheap makeup in an even cheaper motel room, using a burrito wrapper as a mixing palette.

Her head throbs, and the burritos wrestle with the nausea and the acetaminophen. She sucks down more soda, tagging in sugar and caffeine. How many times has she been here, nursing a concussion and a countdown, taking inventory of the clothes on hand and her face in the mirror, making them add up to a plausible cover?

The clerk at the resale shop hadn’t looked once, much less twice; same with the drive-through worker. The cashier at the beauty supply had written a phone number on her receipt, gave her a loyalty card with a couple bucks on it that she said was “an extra one lying around,” and cheerfully encouraged her to come again. On a good day, this would be flirting. But it’s a bad day, and the number Natasha had been slipped was for a local women’s shelter.

The swelling on her jaw could be useful though. If she can get the color right to conceal the bruising, angle her jaw and shove her tongue into the other cheek to match, it’ll make her whole lower face look puffy. It’ll help sell the fake belly made of duct tape and folded motel towels.

It’s a project, and a project is good. It keeps her from cycling through the failure scenarios hemming her in on all sides. It keeps her outlook from circling the drain.

She lays out her materials and tools, and drops down onto the bed next to them. She doesn’t want to start until she knows she isn’t going to puke; she didn’t pay for the kind of makeup a person can sweat under. She sets aside the fake belly and curls around her own, her unbruised cheek resting on the edge of the bed.

She doesn’t mean to fall asleep.

  


#### Stroudsburg, PA - Jan 8th

Bernice drives too fast, maybe nerves, or maybe the fact that while can press the pedals, she’s looking _through_ not _over_ the steering wheel, so maybe that Mr Magoo reference had been projecting. She also swears at traffic.

Bruce is too tired to stay awake, he needs a few hours to balance his equilibrium, but he still hasn’t heard from Nat. He knows she can take care of herself, but that fond worried ache sits under his breast bone until he finally passes out as they plow through Ohio in the sunny afternoon.

He wakes up in the ass end of Pennsylvania.

Bernice has pulled over at a MacDonald’s, and is sitting on a front wheel well, looking at the darkening sky. He stumbles out of the Jeep, clutching his coat around himself.

“The thing is,” she says, as if it hasn’t been hours since they talked, “they corrupted my work, but I made it. I knew the potential, conceived of it.”

Bruce leans next to her. The engine ticks behind them, hot like a hearth.

“I’ve spent the last year and a half in this state of righteous fury, and sure some of that was probably the oxygen high, but now we’ve been driving forever and it’s kind of like purgatory, time to sit and think about what I’ve done, the reckoning coming. We’re heading towards something, and you have no real reason to help me, and yet, here you are. I can’t believe it’s simply because Romanoff asked you to.”

He crosses his arms, hands in his pits to keep them warm. “It’s never just about the science,” he says. “We keep learning that, over and over.”

“Replicating results.” She sips at the coffee. 

“Natasha asked how I could step away from my work, step away from even the small things I was doing to try to be a part of the world.”

“And?”

“I told her I needed to get my mind right, and that was true. But it was also that I craved the work, the science, the exploration. The questions. I stopped being able to tell the difference between the could and should. And I let the ability to create something world-changing distract me.”

“Hubris,” Bernice’s laugh is bitter.

“It wasn’t that I wanted to stop doing the kind of good work that I could trust myself to do, but I was just running. I wasn’t listening. Asking. I had to...let go.”

“So this is restitution?”

Bruce shakes his head, and nudges her with his knee. “No, this is love.” He grins. “And science.”

“I miss loving science,” Bernice's throat seizes, and she coughs through it. It's not a little chuff, but the full-chest explosive shove of someone trained to methodically clear their lungs. She coughs like Steve Rogers still does when he gets too much smoke or dust. Her voice is rough and steady when she continues, “But not...unconditionally. I've had to be the Norma Jean Baker of the lab to pull this off.”

The sodium parking lights pop on, and Bruce squints at the woman next to him, bathed in golden light like a saint, confessing her sins. “In what way?”

“Romanoff told me to watch a few Marilyn Monroe movies, and to approach the science the way she approached her sex appeal and her sexuality, like two different things she played a shell game with.”

“Double entendre.”

“That breathless hedonism that seemed too ditzy or innocent to be naughty,” she explains. “But Marilyn was a persona played by a survivor, a smartypants who'd been around, who was a voracious reader. She was in hostile territory, built like that and still wanting to have sex with men. So she played their game at a higher level, pretended to be the mouse to their cat, when she was really the human working the cat toy for her own amusement.”

Bruce thinks of her putting on _Key Largo_ , a study in compassion and reluctant heroism. He’s not talking about Monroe when he says, “She built a career out of reading people, and subverting expectations.”

“Nat said, that's how you keep them from stealing your love for science when they're determined to corrupt it. I did so well Akesotech put me on the dog and pony circuit, the token lab coat for demos and sales pitches. I learned a lot they didn’t expect me to notice.” 

She slides off the wheel well, which is a drop for her, but she lands solid and spry. “It puts a filter between yourself and something you love, when you can't just follow your impulses, when you have to take into account how it's going to land, how it can be abused. It's a hard lesson, but a good one.”

“Love is passion,” Bruce says, “but it's also taking care.”

Bernice tugs his sleeve, “Come on, I’ll buy you a coffee so you can drive.”


	15. Encore Set

### Encore Set

~*~

_Your face is fallen sad now_

_For you know the time is nigh_

_When I must remove your wings_

_And you_

_Must try to fly_

_\-- **Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds**_

~*~

#### Overslept / So tired / If late / Get fired / Why bother? / Why the pain? / Just go home / Do it again (Norman Colp, poem installation in Port Authority to Times Square passageway) - Jan 8th

The grace Hill’s been able to grant them ends abruptly when both their phones go off. Bernice thumbs the call live on speakerphone, and the tension in Pepper’s voice is audible.

“You need to pull over ASAP. Get across the bridge into New York. We’ll have a young man waiting at the bakery in the Port Authority. You’ll know him when you see him.”

They ditch the car at the airport in Newark.

They’ve got more baggage now— files and samples and a compact data bank that’s dense like a star. Bruce empties his backpack of socks and books, toiletries and headphones and chargers, even the grey handkerchief he's kept from Bolivia. The only thing he keeps is the journal of transcribed conversations with Hulk. He's studied them to the point of memory, but he can’t risk pitching it and they don’t have time to burn it.

They catch an airport shuttle crowded with commuters from DC and the west coast, descending along with them into the Port Authority bus terminal.

Bernice hauls Bruce toward the bakery by his sleeve. She's still bright and attentive, eyes scanning the crowd, while he’s bone weary. She should be running on fumes just like he is; he suspects her cure overshot the mark and gave her a skosh more than normal stamina.

“Hi!”

A wiry young man bounces toward them as if shot out of the pastry case like a human cannonball. “This’s so good, I mean I can’t believe--” he clears his throat. “I’m Peter,” he waves, wild-eyed with a crawling anticipation. “I’m...a big fan.”

Peter is so young he’s hard to look at, so Bruce and Bernice look at each other. They’ve both been grad advisors, and the enthusiasm is familiar if frenetic. Bernice asks, “Bad Ideas Start Here?”

Bruce tugs his ball cap down. “Oh yeah.”

“C’mon guys, there’s a car--” Peter interrupts himself again, this time with a full body flinch synchronous with a ping off the metal door next to him.

Bernice ducks and Peter says “Whoa,” his reflex so fast Bruce only sees a blur and then a gun bouncing off the end of a thick sticky line of thread.

They huddle around Bernice as she jams it in a backpack, holding it by the silencer.

The muffled crack was ambiguous enough to leave gaps of doubt about what it was, but unnerving enough to raise hackles. The crowd is now a murmuring uneasy thing that grates on Bruce, makes his teeth throb with a banked roar. Two men slipping through with purpose are easy to spot in the erratic swarm of commuters.

“Run, run,” he rasps, trying to wrest his sleeve from Bernice's fist as Peter hustles them through the station, “ _Go_.”

Even missing a gun their pursuers are still restrained, trying to move through the crowd without causing a stir, but he knows any second they’ll give up inconspicuous and start shooting again.

Peter tugs at his arm, eyes big with concern at the way Bruce pants as he struggles with the other guy. “Mr. Stark says no code green--not out here.”

Bruce shakes his head since he can’t shake free of the kid’s steel grip, “You guys have to go.” 

“C’mon, c’mon,” Peter urges, “ _Please_ , with us, I know a way.”

He pulls them through the commuters with the confidence of a native New Yorker, through ever tighter gaps in the mass of humanity. He barely grazes a man with a briefcase, Bernice using her forearm like a crowbar to follow, before they both get swallowed up by the crowd.

The executive jerks around to confront Bruce, biting out, “What’s your problem?”

Bruce raises his hands in appeasement, muscles knotting between his shoulder blades.

Bernice reappears and elbows the executive in the hip, otherwise ignoring him completely to yell at Bruce, “Stop flirting and get a move on!”

The executive takes one look at her and swivels on his heel to go about his way, evidently a veteran of runty women with their backs up.

Bruce is doused in cold sweat, feeling the echo off the tile walls pelting his skin. He can handle people and trains, he's lived in denser cities. It's being trapped, running, being shot at, narrowly avoiding a tussle in a tunnel.

The crowd parts like a stream as Bernice darts in close and glares up at him. Her eyes narrow, and he knows his own are green, the other consciousness surging.

She stares back, and the sheer ballsy intention of it, the deliberation, wears him down. Her grip is solid on his hand, “Come.” 

They run.

At the turnstiles ahead people pour out of the terminal and into the street, but Peter veers away suddenly as a man and two women in suits vault over the gates. They move aggressively, fluidly, more like Steve than any other trained agents Bruce has ever seen outside of SHIELD.

“Shit.”

“This way,” Peter says, “We’ve gotta get underground.”

A security guard has come out of the booth to yell at the agents, and they’re swamped by a group of school kids just long enough for Bruce and the others to skid around a corner and trip down a set of stairs, fast and off-balance.

Peter shoots ahead of them, his head bobbing as they jog through the tunnel.

It’s getting harder to stay focused. The chants aren't working, meditation is impossible, and he's too fucking tired for reasoning. Hulk wants out. He hates this, and while Bernice is going strong, her legs are short and she doesn’t know where she’s going--she’s not so much a drag as she is a tripping hazard.

Frustration crosses Peter’s face, but he keeps pulling them through more tunnels. More people. More platforms. More stairs--and then they’re outside.

Biting cold whips at Bruce’s hair and stings his cheeks, and the furious chaos of Times Square is just as much of a physical blow, with lights and tourists, animated marquees, and costumed performers.

Bernice’s hand tightens; Peter is gone.

Panic rises in Bruce’s chest and forces out the air. So many people, so much potential for harm, and the Other Guy is howling from the pursuit. Agents at Port Authority means agents here. More underground. They can’t linger.

“Doctor and doctor,” a Spiderman drops right in front of them. There are two other Spidermen within thirty feet, but they're doing an acrobatic bit. The one that just referenced their credentials is flashing his own, dangling upside down from a streetlamp on a filament of the same substance clotting the trigger of the gun in Bernice's bag.

Bruce opens his mouth but she tugs, more on the ball than he is at this point.

Running, stress, being chased through New York while trying to protect a scientist targeted by his mortal enemy? It’s too much. No amount of agreement is going to keep Hulk under wraps, and pointed destruction or not, he’ll do too much damage.

“Seriously,” Bruce says, even as they struggle to move forward. “You need to go. Get her to the Tower.”

“Tower’s sold.”

“ _What?_ ”

“Goal is Mr. Stark’s new place, out on Roosevelt Island.”

“Whatever, _where ever_ , just get her to safety.”

“We’re getting you _both_ to safety!” Despite the blank expression of the mask, the head tilt and fidgeting convey compassion and desperation. “ _Whichever_ both!”

If he does this in fear, it’s disaster. He took himself out of this world to get his mind right, to build an understanding...he has to trust himself sometime...and he’d promised Natasha. It’s what she asked for. His ability to get Bernice to a place of safety, however he saw fit.

“Not monstrous,” Bernice says, “Heroic. Chaotic _good_.”

Bruce closes his eyes. He thinks of the press of Natasha’s mouth on his throat, her wrist in his grip, her laughter, the giddy playfulness of the crack of her hand against his cheek. The way she'd so carefully wrapped him in her scarf against the cold. The glorious surge of freedom meeting rock solid control.

Images come back; pinching a tiny splinter of chalk to form letters, soft fresh rain running down his back, cold starlight and warm arms cradling his head. Hulk soothing him.

“Get us there,” Bruce opens his eyes, “As quickly as you can.”

Spiderman is a presence, and he bops through the crowd wielding his enthusiasm like a machete, opening a pathway from Times Square to Rockefeller Station. The attention drives Bruce’s shoulders up into his ears. He hasn’t had to run like this in a long time, and the fear creeps back, the surety that being caught would entail worse than detainment, and that he’s putting everyone on the street at terrible risk.

They can just snipe Bernice. Taking Bruce down would require heavy artillery and result in collateral casualties--a feature, not a bug if you're making a case against the humanity of anyone enhanced. He cinches the heavy backpack tighter. Bernice pants under her own, stuffed with hard drives and a stolen gun. Her color is great, but he resists the urge to get bigger, sweep them both in his arms and protect them from all these damned people and windows and passing cars.

Peter swipes them through the gate at Rockefeller, timing on their side as the F-train doors open.

Spiderman waves, and begins an admirably deft distraction display. They slip in behind the spectacle.

It’s only a few stops. They’re so close.

Bernice pokes Bruce's leg and flicks a thumb toward the three agents boarding the train car. They move toward the far end, where Spiderman helps an elderly gent with his phone camera. For now.

The doors are closing. There won’t be anywhere to go. 

Bruce’s face tightens, the spike of adrenaline making everything feel sharp and overwhelming, the fear of being trapped, of losing control. He hisses to Bernice, “Off!” and bolts for the nearest closing door, hoping his people follow him, but braced if it's agents instead.

He gets both; two agents dart out of train cars and start scanning the platform.

“Karen, I need a map--thanks!” Peter yanks at them both to the platform edge, whispering fiercely, “Down! We can go underground!”

Bernice says, “We are underground!”

“Abandoned tunnels out to the island, we can pop up further down, catch a train if it’s clear. We’re so close.”

Deeper, under the river. Wonderful. Bruce huffs, “Tony make that suit?” 

He nods. They drop down and follow him about twenty meters into the darkening tunnel, to a grey door with a thick tarnished padlock. Bruce keeps track of the noise variations behind him. The agents are still on the platform, but it’s only a matter of moments before they take a peek down the tunnel. Peter snaps the lock and swings the door open, saying, “Just through here--”

The tunnel is packed like a junk drawer, broken turnstiles, lengths of timber, bundles of cabling and rusty wire the size of haystacks. There’s possibly enough room to squeeze in and maybe close the door, but the way is impassable.

Bernice pats Peter on the shoulder and says, “The map is not the territory.”

Peter frets, “Karen says there’s another train in six minutes.”

It’s now or never.

Bruce hands Bernice his glasses, Peter the backpack. Hopping, he shucks his pants and shirt, his jacket and shoes, thanking past for Bruce putting on boxer briefs whenever the hell he last got dressed.

He closes his eyes, and asks for a little help.

“Oh,” he hears Bernice as the change takes him, “Oh my.”

~*~

Spidey darts like a firefly. Hulk runs.

Hulk cradles the tiny Lab Lady in his elbow like a chihuahua, and follows Spidey. He scrapes his head on the grungy ceiling but he ducks lower, grumbling, and doesn't shoulder it out of the way. 

Hulk is curious, but they have a job. 

Follow Spidey. Protect Lab Lady. Expect bullets, but don’t smash.

It’s dark and damp. Hulk smells the power humming through the middle rail, feels the shifting vibration. Rock and tile scrape his fingers, his shoulders, rough on his toes.

Don’t smash. Save. Don’t smash.

Save.

~*~

The buzzing finally rouses Natasha, sore and stiff, fumbling for her gun and her phone.

“Go,” she answers.

It’s Maria this time, “Hey chuckles, where’re you at? The party’s about to start once the guest of honor gets here.”

“Still curling my hair,” She sounds groggy as hell, and puts it on speakerphone so she can splash water on her face. “I’ll be fashionably late in a couple hours.”

“We’re already booting party crashers,” Maria can never quite scrub the sarcasm when she affects a flighty demeanor, but it does help sell her dated vocabulary as an ironic choice when she drawls, “fucking lame-o.”

Nat’s used all the miserly towels to craft the fake belly to cradle the vapor tank, so she washes up with the last two washcloths, using the dry one to help blend the makeup. The bruises have darkened and spread from cheek to jaw, but her head does feel better.

She’s had the car too long, though, so she ditches it in long term airport parking in White Plains and lifts another to drive into Midtown Manhattan.

She leaves that one in a garage, walks four blocks to stow the suitcase of files at a luggage storage place, and walks another two to Grand Central Station. The duct tape pulls at her skin, the vapor tank digging into her ribs despite the towel padding. She braces the under curve of her projecting belly and walks faster in the evening chill.

She just needs to get to Stark’s penthouse on Roosevelt Island. She can’t do anything right now about Bernice, or Bruce.

At the station she’s only a few miles away, half an hour at best, so close, but the security guards by the entrance are milling. There are more on duty than they’re used to, some consulting their tablets, asking for ID, stopping more than half the people exiting the building.

It’s not exactly illegal, but it’s not making any friends: New Yorkers are not, by and large, keen on law enforcement nosing in their business. More importantly, Natasha's belly won’t pass a pat down. She looks for an unobtrusive exit.

~*~

Hulk smiles at the approaching train, Lab Lady in one arm and Spidey around his neck.

Hulk leaps as it passes, hooking his fingers on the car and landing on his toes on top.

Lab Lady whoops in his ear. Spidey makes a funny gurgle. Hulk laughs at the wind whipping his hair. 

Lights come and Spidey yells, “Shit shit shit. Dr. Banner!!!”

Train too big, space too small.

Hulk lets go and rolls off. Hulk shrinks back to let puny Bruce run in the narrow wedge of space next to the train. _Run like mouse, Banner, trip over feet. Trip over baggy shorts_.

Puny Banner tells him to _fuck off_. And also to _grab the train_.

Hulk shoves forward again with Banner’s help.

“Oh god,” Spidey says, “I can’t unsee that.”

Hulk grins, scoops them under one arm, and catches the back end of the last car. Now the wind bobbles his dick too.

~*~

Bruce comes to naked in a street, somehow still on his feet, so wrung out just the idea of sitting down makes him sob. The night is never dark in New York, but it is ball-shriveling cold.

Bernice offers his glasses, and it takes several attempts to get them seated on his head. Despite the big opaque lenses, Peter is somehow making strict unwavering eye contact. 

“We’re almost there,” Peter points to the new Cornell Tech campus sparkling in the distance, obscured by the Queensboro bridge, which in turn is obscured by Stark’s latest quirky acquisition of New York real estate.

“I’m not impressed,” Bernice sniffs. “Is that the point?”

The apartment building is a rectangular pipe of concrete, two lines of windows running up the near side in hopscotch layout. _Classic brutalist_ , Tony’s voice supplies in his head, the only guy Bruce has ever met who has the kind of feelings for ugly architecture styles the way some people adore ugly dogs. It would be hilarious if there wasn’t a conspicuous white van parked in front.

Bruce’s teeth chatter. He’s woozy with exhaustion, and Hulk is huffing in his ear, confused. Does Bruce need him? Can he come back?

“Peter, is there a helipad on top of the building? Can you get Bernice up there?”

“Hold on,” Bernice says, shoving a hand deep in the backpack.

Peter assesses her, eyes his environment, “Yeah, I think so Dr. Banner.”

“Then do it.”

“Banner…”

“I’ll be right behind you,” he says, “and I wouldn't use the gun anyway.”

“You doof,” she gives up digging and zips it shut, resigned, “I was looking for the briefs, but all I could find were the medium.”

Peter coaxes her across the street, ducking behind cars, then yanks her into the air in a swinging trajectory to the roof of Stark’s latest ugly building.

Bruce backs into a cluster of prickly bushes. He decides to sit because in a few seconds he's going to fall. Might as well retain some dignity.

“We’re okay,” he talks to Hulk, easing him down. “We’re okay.”

He says it even as two men get out of the white van, and head his direction.

Bruce could fight, he could give over, let Hulk do it for him. But he won’t. He’s so spent, maybe it’s not _won't_ but _can’t_.

They’re getting closer. He tries to get his mind right, his body moving in more than just a locked shiver. Nothing works. He closes his eyes against the woosh in his ears. Prepares for rough hands to grab his arms.

The roaring in his ears is too close to be a dream, the warmth too welcome. He opens his eyes.

“Jesus, Bruce,” Tony grins, hovering over the pavement. “I know the code phrasing was ‘ _party at Stark’s house_ ’, but we traditionally at least start the night with some pants--”

“Behind you.”

Tony turns, repulsor field sliding into a shield that bounces bullets.

Bruce can only murmur, “Cool party trick.”

“Get on.”

~*~

“What do you mean she’s not here yet?” Bruce’s borrowed bathrobe is red and gold, a thick luxurious plush. It’s absurdly short. “Where is she?”

“She’ll be here, Banner,” Tony shoos him toward the shower.

Bruce has more clothes here beside the suit and a selection of ties laid out on the bed. A hoodie he remembers hiding from a spy. A worn fisherman sweater. Kept like fucking love letters. Maybe she even secured them with the rope, instead of the customary ribbon. He fiddles with the bathrobe knot.

“Get in the damned shower. Kikkert is grabbing a snack with Pepper and the covert cabal. Romanoff will be here. Meanwhile, you smell terrible and you look worse.”

That gets him moving long enough to scrub off the bushes, and the tunnels, and the roads. When he opens the door to let out the steam, Tony is still there, drinking a cup of coffee.

Bruce is so tired his hand shakes when he clicks on the razor. He looks shaggy, with scratchy stubble that’s not quite a beard. It turns his jaw into a badly sketched line, makes him look old, or maybe just exhausted. He feels both. He sets down the razor.

“It’s fine, man. You don’t have to look GQ.” Tony lays a hand on his shoulder. “Just get dressed. “

“It’s not that, it’s...” Bruce hangs his head. He’s come this far, brought Bernice in safe, to do exactly this for Nat, and he’d known since he saw her text days ago that it would likely be his exposure, the end of his sabbatical and the beginning of some kind of reckoning. A press conference is nothing...except it’s not being able to go back. “I’m not worried about looking pretty, Tony. I...with the beard I can be anonymous. I don’t really know...who I want to be.”

“Well currently you’re full-on goat rodeo. It’s what?” Stark tugs at the growth on his cheeks, runs a thumb along his neck as if listening to the bristles rasp. “Two days worth.”

“Tony.” He’s right, of course.

“There’s settings on it Bruce, you can just--oh hell, here.” He loots through the drawer the razor came from and pops a guard onto the end. He turns Bruce toward the light, leans against the sink and gently takes his jaw in hand.

Bruce closes his eyes as Tony moves the razor easily over his cheeks, around his mouth and nose, and mutters calculations to himself about Bruce’s sideburns. He pops off the guard and cleans up his neck, then brushes a hand over his work.

“Okay, you’re officially allowed to wear that suit now.”

“Thank you.”

“It’s fine,” Stark flaps at him, “but for the love of Nikola Tesla and his sweet pigeon soul mate, get your ass dressed.”

“You’ll let me know when Nat--?”

“Yes.”

Bruce dresses as quickly as he can, worry gnawing his stomach, the churn of anxiety about Natasha’s whereabouts, about stepping in front of the public again and officially revealing his presence, about making sure they can convey the depth of the conspiracy here. 

Strangely, the suit helps, the slip of jacket over shirt, the way it contains him in layers long associated with deliberation, method, thoughtful precision.

It’s the tie that stymies him...the choice is so trivial but with such import, he’s at a loss.

He comes out to the living room to find Bernice in a simple loose blue dress, talking with Pepper, Helen Cho...and Betty Ross. He grips a tie in each hand and does his level best to act nonchalant.

“Hi,” he holds up the ties to the room. “Please tell me someone has a preference?”

Pepper steps up with a soft smile, blocking his view of the room while she flips up his collar and threads a tie around his neck, saying, “They’re both fine, but this one will look better on camera.” Her manner is a strange mix of deferential and commanding as she measures the lengths, ties, adjusts the knot, flips his collar back, and brushes his jacket down. She’s eyeballing his face the whole time, assessing, and then hands him a bottle of eyedrops like a magician manifesting a bouquet.

“That’s all fine and good, Agent Carter,” Bernice says, “but I’m not talking to anyone until Romanoff gets here.”

The blonde woman shakes her head. “She may not be able to get here in time. The folks after you aren’t above board, so she’s taking countermeasures. She’s a wanted fugitive.”

“So am I,” Bruce mutters.

Pepper gestures, and he uncaps the bottle and puts the saline drops in his eyes. It helps the gritty feeling.

“No offense, Dr. Banner, but you’re old news for everyone except Secretary Ross.”

While he’s distracted Pepper snaps open a small case and dabs shades of orange and beige onto the back of her hand. Bruce freezes, and she takes that opening to deftly smudge under his eyes.

Betty’s not even trying to hide her amusement. That familiar mocking grin cuts right through the awkwardness.

Carter continues, “Technically you’re still a person of interest, but no one’s trying to issue shoot to kill orders on you.”

“But Natasha?”

“No one knows how to piss people off like Romanoff.” Hill addresses Bernice, “Although you’re giving her a run for her money. For which we thank you.”

“It’s not a general press conference,” Pepper turns, clicking the compact closed. “It’s a combination of political reporters, technical specialists and a few national papers. I gave them a partial list of the issues and principal players. It helps that we have an established record of--’

“Dropping bombshells?” Hill suggests.

“Exclusive news breaks.” Pepper insists. “Though frankly, I didn’t have the language to explain fully what was happening.”

“That’s why I’m here,” Helen Cho puts a gentle hand on Bernice’s, and Bernice holds it with a look of pride she can’t quite bring to bear on Helen.

“And you, Betty?” Bruce asks softly.

“Helen called me as a character witness,” she says, “for everyone involved.”

Bernice reaches her other hand out to Betty, who grabs it in both of hers with a solid couple of pats. The woman draws a deep breath, then another, then squares up and shakes her hands loose, stands up and says, “Let’s do this thing.”

~*~

On the train Natasha slips a hand into her quilted winter coat and shoves the towel belly into a lumpier roll configuration. The illusion of pregnancy had given her the benefit of the doubt, and a free decaf coffee at the luggage storage place, but she’s looking to be overlooked from now on. A tired grumpy walk and a doughy outline will cause a lot more eyes to skate over her.

She hits the street with her knit cap down over her eyebrows, the scarf looped high around her neck and chin. The only things that stick out about her are the brown ponytail of the wig and the icy tip of her nose.

She stops down the block to buy a pizza roll and watch the traffic around the building. No news trucks, but a couple town cars and SUVs spilling out knots of people. There’s a parked panel van that’s a likely decoy, and the same three vehicles keep circulating on the loop road around the island, obvious as vultures.

She’s close enough to call for an escort, but it’s much more satisfying to get the timing right, to casually trail between a couple of building residents and a brace of visitors, each of them assuming she’s with the other group, and slip into the building herself.

The doorman takes one look at her worn coat and saggy demeanor, and asks, “Can I help you?”

Behind him, Maria drawls, “She’s with me.”

The elevator door slide closed on FRIDAY’s familiar voice, “Welcome, Agent Romanoff.”

“I haven’t been an Agent for years now.”

Maria presses her warm shoulder against hers. “Try that on a day when you don’t bust a corruption case wide open.” 

“You think I couldn’t have gotten past a doorman, even one Potts hired?”

“I promised to see you all the way to safety, get you settled.” The elevator open on a floor with large conference room doors, closed but humming like a beehive. Maria leads her past them and through a palm locked plain door just past the elevator bank, a convenient executive suite tucked away.

It has the hallmarks of Potts’ warm take on modernism with a flare that’s pure Stark -- laptop stations, a holoscreen set up in the corner with a bank of files displayed on one side and a projection on the other, a television on mute with closed captioning set to CNN, and an alcove wet bar dominated by a gleaming white space-age espresso machine. It might actually be the one from Pepper’s old office.

Outerwear and papers lay strewn about, and the executive washroom exudes humidity and soap scent. Natasha unzips her coat and strips off her sweater, unable to stand the duct tape on her skin one second longer.

“Parker,” Maria crouches down to inspect the lump, “we’re gonna need some supplies.”

Natasha opens her tac knife and the young man screeches to a stop in the doorway. 

He looks panicked, wide eyes taking in the tableau of Natasha stripped to the waist in her sport bra, slicing into her own fake belly so Maria can yank out the vapor tank and set it on a table. Maria then takes the knife and starts cutting towels off her like skinning a deer.

“Um...duct tape, okay, adhesives,” he disappears like a ricochet, yelling, “keep the towels handy!”

“He’s a whiz kid, Tony tells me,” Maria flicks an amused eyebrow.

Natasha had added Peter Parker's name to her webspider after Germany. He didn’t show up very much, and didn’t seem to correlate with Spiderman in any way, which was perfect.

He’s back with cooking oil and dish soap. They soak the thick lathes of tape with oil compresses to loosen them off her skin, and Maria sends him to the kitchen across the hall for provisions, “Whatever’s left on the sandwich tray, tea and cookies, there’s gotta be whisky around here--”

“I’m fine, I had a couple bites of pizza roll while I was casing the building.”

Peter fails to muffle his, “Wow,” as he whizzes across the hall to make a more substantial plate for the Black Widow.

“C’mon, it looks like it’s getting started,” Maria nudges her back into a rolling chair, and parks her in front of the holoscreen with its display of multiple cameras and varying perspectives: reporters in rows of chairs on one, a room of well-dressed people sitting and standing and pacing in another--the impromptu green room, whereas she’s been stashed in the tactical heart.

Maria peels off soggy tape as Natasha flicks open the video feeds. Potts gives last minute directions, gesturing towards a doorway and cocking her head at a question. Carter leans against a wall, arms crossed. One of the lawyers Natasha knew from SHIELD jots down notes. Dr. Cho sits beside Dr. Ross, both leaning into an animated discussion with a third woman. Natasha recognizes her from Hill’s book recommendations. “Oh Maria, you fangirl.”

“As a leading bioethicist on public policy and enhanced individuals, Dr. Capra brings an essential perspective to this whole shebang.” She dumps the detritus into the wastebasket and hands Natasha a wet soapy rag of motel towel to cut through the oil. “And Sharon’s the one who called her.”

Natasha cleans off the makeup first, and Maria sighs eloquently and leaves.

She puts the misshapen sweater back on and finally makes herself toggle the camera to the other side of the room. Bernice slumps in an armchair, shell-shocked or waiting for doom. Next to her, from habit or for support, Bruce leans in mirror image toward her.

Natasha doesn’t realize that she’s expanding the image until she’s analyzing the pasty circles under his eyes, the trimmed bristles along his jaw. 

They both look so goddamn tired, but that doesn’t matter. They’re here. Alive. Safe.

Parker returns first with a plate; a couple sandwiches, oatmeal raisin cookies, a cup of tea, a glass of milk, a handful of sweeteners and condiments, and a generous tot of scotch in a second coffee cup. Maria sweeps in and swaps the scotch for a couple tablets of painkiller, giving Natasha a pointed expectant stare.

Peter looks between them like watching ping pong. He doesn’t know this isn’t about letting Maria mother her, but a performance of service and trust, echoing the nonverbal command Maria would use on Nick when she needed him to stop immediately and take what she was offering, be it information or caffeine, a weapon or a snack bar.

Natasha takes the tablets without looking at them, washing them down with scalding tea like a sacrament. Maria nods and tosses back the scotch.

Peter exhales and rubs his forearms.

“There’s audio feed from the press room,” Maria points to the interface, “It’s being recorded, and we’ll provide a transcript.”

“Transparency,” Natasha says.

“T is for,” Maria agrees. She drops into an armchair nearby and crosses her arms. “You know, the choice is a bitch, Romanoff, between being spectacularly angry at you for keeping secrets, and being awed by your ability to unearth conspiracies.”

Maria’s strum und drang is nothing new, and Natasha knows this is worry and relief and maybe a little bit of hurt. Maybe more than a little, since she’s decided to let it show. The strange and uncomfortable part is that these emotions are being applied to her. “I’m...sorry?”

“Are you, Romanoff?” Maria laughs at herself.

“Yes, I am,” Natasha tells her. “T is also for trustworthy.”

On the big screen, Potts welcomes the crowd from the podium. “Most of you have been given a small dossier on what we will be reviewing. It’s heavy stuff, ranging from issues of accountability and human rights, to hardcore scientific data, to public policy and political ramifications, to a potential conspiracy to undermine governmental institutions. We can hardly cover all that ground in a single press release. Tonight is a marathon, not a sprint.”

Was it only two days ago that she’d sent her talking points to Potts, who’d sent back a shot of a legal pad with a few hundred words sketching out a press event and key contacts. The room is as packed as the materials being handed out.

“We will be providing expert witnesses, scholars, and scientists. You will be allowed to ask questions initially, but further inquiries will be submitted to the speakers. We have set up a media center for anyone who wishes to file a story immediately. There is internet, but you’re searches will be restricted. A number of confidential documents will be discussed, as well as testimony from those who’ve been given the expectation of confidentiality. If and when you file a story, we will make the best arrangements for those to be fact checked.”

Potts smiles. She’s easy with the press. Confident. Compared to many of Stark’s cat circuses, this event must seem remarkably orderly. “Now, are we ready?”

Taking the measure of the room and the salivating journalists, she says, “Then let’s begin.” 

Natasha tunes out as Potts gracefully unfolds her glasses and reads the prepared statement.

Stark draws her back in. 

He saunters in front the podium. “Heroism is more profound than punching aliens, making a show and hitting hard,” Tony says, arms out. “I know that coming from me, that statement sounds like soulless grandstanding. But heroism is also taking a stand, and speaking out. We all know how hard it can be to stand up against the powerful, and if you’ve been paying attention, you also know how essential is it that we listen to those who do.”

“It takes tremendous courage to stand up against both a billion dollar corporation, and the U.S. government, but that’s why we’re here today. The technology to pick and choose gene mutations, to survey whole populations and target traits by whim, to do this without any ethical discussion or public oversight, or even knowledge or consent of the people affected, these technologies do not belong in the hands of those who will market and exploit it to the highest bidder.”

A flurry breaks out amongst the journalists.

“Are we talking Snowden? Silkwood? The Panama Papers?”

“Yes,” Stark says with a wolfish grin, and the room explodes.

From his seat on the back of the couch, Peter says like a quote, “‘ _In a world where corporate entities can act at the level of Iran-Contra, whistleblowers are the real superheroes…_ ’”

“Did that whippersnapper just reference the Reagan era?”

Natasha shrugs, her mouth full of sandwich.

Peter makes a chagrined frog face and explains, “I have a friend who sends me books the way most people send memes. Then I send her memes based on the books.”

Natasha finds it interesting that Maria is holding back a snort. It’s a strangely caring gesture.

Onscreen, Stark yields the podium to a junior senator serving on the House Intelligence Committee. She confirms Carter’s research about contracts granted to Akesotech that bypassed committee review, and then hints at a last-minute unannounced meeting where a discussion of overlapping definitions of human and weapon was tabled when she showed up.

In the audience a blonde reporter raise a hand; Patricia Walker, representing Vox Media, asks about the human experimentation angle. She’s alight with the same outrage that sits heavy and cold in Natasha’s gut, an inspiring fire.

Her face flushes hot and tight. She had expected the handful of people she’d contacted, the favors she’d called in. She was not prepared for a widening group of people fighting the same fight, joining together like this. She’s been working in the dark, connecting people and disseminating information, but it’s reaching critical mass in that room, no longer a web handcrafted from subterfuge and cunning, but a cabal of scientists, lawyers, journalists, all coming together to expose the machinations of the power-hungry.

Natasha puts her hand to her cheek, wincing at the tenderness.

~*~

In the makeshift green room, Bruce stands, cracking his back and rolling his shoulders. The nerves futzing under his skin are different than the kind that lead to the Other Guy making an appearance. These are old school jitters; pre-thesis defense, budget presentations, big experiments. The first time he asked Betty out. It’s been a long time since he’s felt anything like this, maybe not since the accident. He can’t look at her, head tilted towards Helen, so he shifts, wrings his hands. 

Pepper presses his wrist and he startles. The whisper of fear in her wide eyes washes his anxiety away with guilt.

“Sorry,” she firms up her grip and leans in to whisper, “Maria texted that Natasha’s here. She’s safe.”

He takes a step to Bernice, legs a little wobbly, and squeezes her shoulder as he tells her. She pulls him down to sit beside her as Dr. Cho begins speaking on the monitor.

“As a potential competitor with Akesotech, and a former colleague of Dr. Kikkert,” Helen Cho says, “I’d like to bring your attention to the scope of what this company has aimed to do with the valuable medical research they’re misusing. Such as extreme growth factors.”

Helen takes full advantage of the Stark tech holographic package. A nearly life-sized holo of the trout thing from Wyoming fills the headspace of the room, complete with speckles and rainbow sheen.

“This fish was one of four stocked in a Wyoming lake to impress a potential client of Akesotech on a junket. They were a demonstration of the size and control the tech could offer; three were ‘caught’ by means of implanted stun trackers, averaging six feet long, but this one got away when the tracker failed. By winter it was the size of a city bus.”

The trout flaps and morphs into the monstrous mudpuppy.

“Field tests of swam generation and manipulation, conducted at a water park.” Helen’s voice can barely contain her disgust, “Seventeen injuries during the initial evacuation of families and children.”

The mudpuppy disintegrates into a swarm of housecat sized frogs, iridescent green and eerily silent compared to the real thing.

“Perhaps most alarming, population inventories and genetic editing. Treating people as things to be adjusted for the convenience of those wielding this technology.”

They hop away to reveal a young girl in a hospital bed. She has cornrows and a weary smile, and a transfusion line into her skinny arm is affixed with pink medical tape.

“I want to emphasize that with proper testing and review, Dr Kikkert’s discoveries hold incredible promise for alleviating suffering and reducing mortality. Instead, Akesotech rejected any ethical human trials or review boards for their testing, instead developing avenues of weaponization and illegal sales. No one with any measure of ethics or responsibility in our community would have agreed to this.”

~*~

Natasha has sidled through Stark’s code to hack into FRIDAY for access to audio from the green room, the kitchen and the balconies.

Pepper huddles in the green room with a trio of science reporters who’ve been following Bernice’s research from the beginning; the breezy article a decade ago about targeted cancer therapy, the meatier piece before that about curing sickle cell, which is where the photo of the little girl came from.

Out in the main room Helen’s supposed to segue into Betty Ross’s testimony on the intended applications of the technology, speaking to the small scale animal tests and careful methodology of Bernice’s previous work, her assessment of the scientist’s character.

Instead, Tony speaks again.

“I sense, despite Dr. Cho’s scintillating visual aids, that you guys are restless. So let’s mix it up. We’ve heard from the government about the ramifications for public safety,” Stark says, “and we’ll get back to that. But right now I’d like to introduce an expert on mutations and the risks associated with such.”

In the green room, Bruce tenses.

“He’s also had first-hand experience with some of those visual aids. It’s been a while since he’s made a public appearance, so I beg of you, be nice.”

He stands, spreads his fingers out to counteract the fists they’ve curled into, and walks stiffly out into the main room.

It takes a moment for the reporters to understand what they’re seeing, who they’re seeing. Cameras go up reflexively, but Stark waves them back down with a clipped, “Nuh-uh, no photos.”

Bruce clears his throat and clutches the podium. He looks down at his terse bullet point notes, and speaks.

“As my esteemed colleague Dr. Cho has discussed, the prototype specimens that were released in Minnesota over two years ago,” the dayglo frogs reappear in a small projection next to him, “were designed to be sterile before they were sold to an illegal exotic animal breeding operation. When the frogs failed to breed, the remaining egg stock was dumped into a runoff culvert, and the result brought to light that there was an underground market dealing in this technology. At the time it was considered a case of faulty merchandise, or a failure of bleeding edge tech.”

Stark has left the room and all the eyes on Bruce are sharp, but they aren’t at all cutting. He has their attention with his words, with these truths.

“We now know from the evidence gathered and brought forward by Dr. Bernice Kikkert, that this was a tactical leak she had engineered to investigate and bring to light ethics violations in her own company.”

The frogs are replaced by a photo of two smiling fisherman in front of a summer Wyoming mountainscape, holding a six foot trout between them. One is the Akesotech investor Natasha had danced with back at Steve’s charity auction. The other is a ranking member of the House Intelligence Committee.

Let the whistleblowing begin.

Natasha sips tea to dissolve the lump in her betraying throat as she watches Bruce introduce Dr. Kikkert. He’s haggard but decked out in his livery, presenting Bernice to this forum like a fucking resume of what he’ll do for her if she only asks.

Stark slips through the door. She doesn’t startle, but her hands pause over the keyboard. They haven’t spoken since Germany.

Walker asks a follow-up, “ _Dr. Kikkert, when you realized that Akesotech wanted to use your research this way, why didn’t you go to the FBI? Or any of the government bodies designed to investigate these types of violations?_ ”

“You got a second, or you too busy corrupting my AI?”

She swivels the chair to face him and he winces. Well then, the bruise is still good for something.

“You should see the other guy,” she says.

Bernice leans forward, adjusting the microphone down. “ _When you spend enough time being brushed aside as a hysterical woman, as too ambitious, not savvy enough, impatient, oversensitive, not a team player...you stop trusting people in power to make the right decisions. Until someone throws you a lifeline._ ”

Natasha doesn’t need to hear about her own infiltration. She heads to the balcony, Stark trailing behind. He leans against the rail. It’s bitter cold even with no wind. Neither of them has a coat. It’ll keep things short.

He muses, “It’s always awkward when the ex shows up.” 

She shrugs. The silence becomes weighted while neither blink, but the cold feels wonderful on her head.

“The thing is,” he continues,”you did all this, put your ass on the line to get all these pieces moving. This feisty old scientist in front of a group of reporters. You don’t even know her, but you tagged and released her like an experiment, trusting she’d make it, that she’d do the right thing. So, how is it, that it was so easy for you to turn on me?”

She’ll never be able to make Stark understand, but she has to try again. He opened up his influence, his connections, his world to help her. Or rather, to help Bruce, who wanted to help her. “I underestimated Ross,” she says, the honesty thick on her tongue. “I underestimated his _influence_. I didn’t take him seriously as a threat, because he was so two-dimensional, and I didn’t look at who might be hiding behind him, seeing him as an investment in the world they wanted to create.”

“See, that’s more of an explanation of why you were playing ball in the first place.” His teeth scrape at his lip. “Not why you switched to playing me.”

“Signing my name has never meant anything, Tony.” She rubs the railing with a thumb. “It’s always been about people. I didn’t pledge my skills to SHIELD, I pledged them to Fury, then to Hill. To Coulson. To Clint. When SHIELD fell it was a betrayal because I’d trusted another damned _institution_ to make decisions because I was afraid to make them _myself_.”

“And in Germany?”

It’s cleansing confessing in the cold, shivering like a dunked witch. There’s a theater to it that the performer in her appreciates, that gives her distance enough to speak through the clench in her throat and the throb in her head.

“You were all my family. But Barnes? He’s Steve’s. Steve believed down to his bones that he was doing the right thing. Even if I didn’t know his endgame, I knew that he’d die to make what he felt was the right choice, for the sake of his family. We were already fractured; I didn’t want it to get worse. I had the ability to help him, to reduce the amount of harm that would happen. So I did.”

Stark sits with that. “Hard not to look at it as being against me instead of for him.”

“That’s all you.”

They stay in silence for a moment.

“I’ve been used...over and over again. I won’t do that anymore. Ross wanted to point us like a gun, just like Zemo. Pierce. Every damned power-hungry asshole who wants to play with people like toys. We need accountability, oversight. I still believe that. It’s too hard to be both the weapon _and_ the heart. Steve is special, and even he fails.”

Stark inhales sharply, pauses, and then sighs it out slowly in a cloud of water vapor that hangs around them.

Natasha slides open the doorwall, “Just call him, already.”

Stark doesn’t answer.

~*~

Bruce reflects that the only reason he hasn’t gone over to Natasha, sunk down on his knees, and laid his head in her lap is that it might have a different meaning in the current context.

Natasha turns Pepper’s hand toward the light, though the glittering stone is big enough to gather every lumen in the room like a bully collecting lunch money.

Betty leans over to say under her breath, “What do you think a billion dollar happy ending looks like?”

“Sparkly,” Bruce snorts, “until the moment it isn’t.”

“I meant,” she smacks his arm to cover her blush, “the whole picket fence and dog and 2.3 kids…or maybe robots.” She pushes her glasses up into her hair. “You know what, I’m gonna just head back out to my own picket fence and non-robot kids and pretend I didn’t just make an accidental handjob joke about one of Forbes’ most influential CEOs.”

“It’s almost done,” Stark says as he passes on his way to the sideboard. “Pep’s releasing the statement. Ross will lose his shit when the blogs start posting. The bigger papers will hold the story, Walker could go either way. She’s got a fire in her belly, that’s for damned sure.”

Natasha brushes by Tony and offers her hand for Betty to shake, “Dr. Ross,” she says, “Thank you. I know this wasn’t easy.”

“I’ve done harder things,” she says, “I can’t let my father continue to mount a campaign against people who deserve better.” Bruce can hear the discomfort, but she rallies smoothly. “Even if I could, as a scientist I find manipulating research this way abhorrent. We’re responsible for what we create, for what we discover. One can claim that technology is just a tool, but everyone knows any tool can also be a weapon.”

Bruce feels his own blush deepen, but as Betty is shaking Tony’s hand, only Nat notices.

“I really need to get home,” she says. “Our sitter costs a fortune. Walk me out, Bruce?”

Bruce punches the elevator button and shoves his hands in his pockets. “I want to thank you for coming, on such short notice, it means a lot to Bernice, and to all of us.”

“I’m just so glad she’s still herself, despite all this struggle, the risks she took, that she’s alive,” Betty shakes her head, “and you, it’s always nice to get proof of life.”

“It’s funny because it’s true.”

“You look good. I mean, that helps,” Betty gestures at the suit, grins, “and the makeup. But there’s a swing in your step.” She shrugs, “I’m glad. You deserve to find some happiness.”

“Betty--”

She holds up her hand. “I’m not looking for an emotional catharsis, Bruce,” she says. “I came to terms with your decisions a long time ago.”

Shame rolls in his gut, but it’s an old friend. One he’s learned to live with. He follows her into the elevator. “I’m sorry.”

“I know,” she touches the back of his hand. “You’ve done good things since.” Her eyes are bright, glassy. “We all get to a point where we either pull our heads out of our asses, or we never will.”

“I appreciate that you seem to put me in the former group,” he says, “God, Betty, thank--”

“I...I came in person because I wanted to give you this.” She presses a small thumb drive into his hand. “It’s...well, just watch it.”

“Okay.” Bruce tucks it into an inside pocket of his jacket.

“My father is a power-hungry jackass.” She straightens. “We don’t speak any more, and I should have done that...much earlier. It’s hard to accept, to finally let go, but it’s...he’s never met my daughters.” She tightens her lips. “Someone sent me that security footage. It’s not evidence. It’s just...more nails, I guess, in the coffin he’s built himself. I can’t be the one to share it. But I won’t be the one to hide it.”

~*~

Peter dropped off acetaminophen and more cookies to Natasha in the executive suite, while Potts casually cleared the briefing room across the hall. Most of them swept out, but a few linger on their phones in the press room.

Everyone except Walker, who Potts sat down in the front row of empty chairs until she brought back Bernice and Bruce, because Walker had submitted the most incisive follow-up questions.

“You’re telling me that Natasha Romanoff helped you develop this plan, back before she was a war criminal.” Walker leans in towards Bernice, eyes bright. “When she was still an Avenger? Can I quote you on that?”

Natasha rubs her temples and zooms in. They knew this was coming. Walker is a far better actress than they’ve given her credit for, taking the anonymous tips as a starting point but still selling the shock and awe. 

Bernice plays along, cradling a mug of chocolate as if Bruce isn’t crouched and vibrating next to her, elbows dug into the chair arms, heels bouncing like a flea-bitten dog. He’s making Walker nervous, her eyes darting to him then skittering away.

“It’s not like I could just go to the Attorney General,” Bernice says. “Certainly not when it became clear that my life was in danger. I needed help, and Ms. Romanoff gave me that help at potentially great personal cost.”

“You needed a hero,” Walker says, almost giddy.

“Not just anyone,” Bernice puts her cocoa on the ground. “I needed _Romanoff_. Her skillset and contacts, her experience, her personal knowledge of what hiding and spilling your secrets means.”

Bruce’s mouth goes soft, and he plants his heels to stop jiggling. “An Avenger.”

This whole thing clicks into place; the cross-country excursion, the dialogue with Hulk, the resurfacing into the public eye...Natasha sees it for what it is now, a large scale emotional version of him bringing her that rope, offering his trust in her abilities and her judgement when it comes to an operation of this scale.

Maria pitches her voice low as she hitches a hip onto the table next to Nat, eyes flicking to the screen, pointing to the trio with her pen. “Walker’s happy with Dr. Kikkert for now, but you’re the real prize.”

Sharon leans against the door to the hallway. “You need to decide, Nat. Obviously, I can provide you some plausible deniability, and the fact that you’re here in Stark’s new fuckpad--sorry, dick measuring contest with Cornell Tech--means that you and Iron Man have maybe made up, but you showing up in the national news having brought a whistleblower to safety? It’s going to be hell for you.”

“Ross isn’t going to have me arrested,” Natasha says. 

“No,” Sharon bites back, steeping closer, “That’s why he’s tried to have you killed instead.”

The feral smile feels good. “Let him keep trying.”

Maria puts down her pen. “You know it’s not gonna be like that, Romanoff. It’s not going to be a sniper’s shot. It’s hauling Banner in for ‘questioning,’ or tying up SI’s contracts and halting the production flow. Keeping Bernice from testifying. Making Potts’ life difficult, or revoking Clint’s deal for plea and parole.”

“More reason to get this right, to not give him the tools to do those things. Finding the right reporter to tell the right story.”

Stark slips in and heads to the wet bar, “Don’t mind me, just looking for the cookie stash.”

“You really think Walker is your best bet?” Maria says, “a former child star turned Howard Stern wannabe?”

“Walker’s a fighter,” Stark calls from the other end of the room. “Anyone who’s been to rehab that many times...”

“No one’s asking you,” Maria says. “The issue isn’t Walker, really. It’s Ross. Or rather, what his cohort could do to her, or to Nat, or Kikkert. Or hell, even SI.”

“I’m not afraid of that douchebag.”

“Why should you be?” Maria narrows her eyes, words biting. “The only thing he can do to you is to make you less rich. He can’t hurt your reputation, make you feel vulnerable. He can’t really wield anything over you.”

“Ross, the heads of Akesotech, they see power as making the world to do your bidding. That they have right to categorize people and change them as they see fit, to concentrate power in the hands of a few men, wealthy and paranoid,” Carter looks hard at Tony. “People like you.”

“I’ve heard that with great power comes great responsibility.” Stark bites into the chunk of cookie in his hand. 

“Accountability,” Natasha says. “It’s not just for superheroes anymore.”

“I’ve been banging on that drum for years.” Stark says, “it’s fun to finally join a band.”

~*~

Bruce leans back against the high table in Tony’s private lab, a floor down from the conference suite, and crosses his arms as Tony slips the drive in. A menu of video thumbnails unfolds, security feeds from laboratories and offices. Bruce reaches out to tap one at random.

“ _All of these goddamned mutants, these enhanced threats_ ,” Thaddeus Ross shakes his head, derisive. “ _They’re a testament to the idiocy of Hydra, the more you try to outright kill them, the more they proliferate_.”

A flippant bit of snark, but also a nasty insight that his obsession continues. Someone off-camera reassures him, “ _Well, that’s why we’re here, sir, discovering how to harness them._ ”

“Well, you do look good in a harness,” Tony says, “or so I’ve heard.” 

“I’m gonna just…” Bruce scrubs at his face, too tired to protest or blush, more concerned with why Betty had released this to him, now. She hadn’t been holding off out of reluctance, he knows, but out of concern for her family’s safety. “It’s hardly incriminating. Maybe a final nail, but alone?”

“He’s got phenomenal viral potential,” Tony says. “If you’re not squeamish about anonymous sources.” He pauses. “And for this guy? I’m not.”

The Avengers can allow Betty to remain an anonymous source, take that heat for her, protect her and her family from retaliation. Far more than her role as character witness, being trusted with these recordings feel like the forgiveness Bruce has long craved and never expected.

“I don’t feel like I’m qualified to address this,” Bruce says. “My interests are vested.”

Tony taps another clip, this one of a conference table at a strange angle, Ross in profile, “ _I mean, I see what you’re saying about the survival rate, but considering the harm one of these guys can cause unchecked, going rogue or working against our interests--honestly, euthanizing them makes the world just as safe as curing them_.”

“If we give this to a reporter, it goes out to the internet. It looks bad, but then it just becomes a bad meme.” Tony chews his lip. “However, if we turn it over to Jennifer…”

“Legal blackmail?”

“I prefer the term _non-disclosure agreement_. But Bruce, it’s your call. She gave it to you.”

He thinks about all of his years on the run, the deaths and damage he’s accountable for, how many could have been prevented if he hadn’t been fleeing Ross’s obsession. He thinks of Steve and Clint and Natasha, made criminals as part of Ross’s campaign to bring enhanced people to heel.

Bruce thinks of Betty and her daughters, of other people’s daughters and sons exposed to a ‘curative’ therapy designed to yoke those it doesn’t outright murder. The clarity of the decision doesn’t lessen his grief for Betty, on her behalf. After all, he still mourns the potential that Brian destroyed, to be a father and a husband instead of a nightmare.

“I’ll call Jen,” he says.

Tony nods, still chewing at his lip. “I’m ah...I’ll leave you to that. I’ve got a call to make myself.”

~*~

_Nothing ever is perfect_

_There’s the good and the bad_

_Though it's never on purpose_

_Sometimes I make you sad_

_The sun don't always shine on you baby_

_And that’s alright_

_‘Cause that’s what happens when you love in real life_

_\-- **Beth Ditto**_

~*~

Natasha blinks through the burning blur in her eyes and considers reversing the screen colors.

It’s closing on three in the morning, the creak of the building and the rustle of the street at a low ebb, so different from the steel and glass sterility of the tower. Stark and Pott’s new project is all about green design flowing into existing structures, mixed use and mixed income, and it’s homey and heartening. On her third glass of wine, Pepper had started talking about revitalization and not stopped even as Tony collected her and took her to their top floor apartment.

The last reporter packed up hours ago, the Feds and assorted JDs before that, and Natasha has transitioned to watching the first reports hit the wires, refreshing the blogs and homepages obsessively. Bernice is sacked out in a guest room, full of the four alarm chili Peter made earlier, venting his nervous energy in the kitchen so he wouldn’t be sent away for being underfoot. He’s wiley, and she approves.

She wishes she knew who taught him the recipe. Maybe Rhodey, holding down the fort upstate. There’s a dried out corner of gluten-free pan cookie on a napkin next to the laptop. She’s been meaning to nibble on it for hours now, but she reloads tabs instead.

She needs to know what their condemnation will look like.

Wooden floors means she hears Bruce’s tread approaching, and she glances as he leans in the doorway. “You should eat the cookie, it’s surprisingly good for not being baked. Or even having flour.”

“Tony says Spiderman’s a chemistry whiz,” her mouth makes small talk like a reflex, but her voice is trashed, as crumbly as the treat abandoned next to her wrist. “Baking is just chemistry you can eat.”

“Theoretically.” He moves further into the room. He’s still wearing the suit, the tie pulled askew and the top button open. “It’s done. As much as it can be.”

She wants to get up, she really does, but she feels frozen. Can’t remember how moving works. This is who she is, like her spider -- watching, waiting, trawling silently through the world gathering info, spinning connections.

“Nat,” he says. “Natasha, it’s over for now. And you need to stop.”

She clicks on a link, yet another bare bones breaking news blurb, and it's maybe a tenth of the story that’s already out there, and three steps removed from an original source, but it's a different tenth, another piece of the puzzle now in the public eye. It checks out, and she lets herself feel a twinge of reassurance that the facts might not be buried immediately in spin.

Bruce comes around to stand in front of her, just beyond the laptop screen.

There are too many facts, coming too fast, and this might not be SHIELD going out in a tsunami of leaks, but it's a sodden hillside finally sliding down in avalanche.

Bruce slips his jacket off and hangs it on the laptop like it's a chair back. She looks up from the obscured screen.

He looks raw, eyes bloodshot as he habitually rolls up his sleeves. When he pops the collar up, his knuckles scritch against the heavy stubble on his jaw. She knows from experience that it will abrade her skin, and suddenly all she can think about is pressing her mouth against the hollow of his throat, baring her teeth to the scrape of his incipient beard.

He pulls his tie looser, and works it up over his head, and swallows like he's trying to choose his words.

He doesn't speak.

She opens her own mouth, but stops as he hangs the tie from one wrist. He slips the lumpy half Windsor tight.

Natasha draws a deep breath, staring at his hand smoothing the length of silk, running it through his other fist with a slow whisper.

She reaches out, and he lets her take the free end. She holds it like a promise.

He tilts his head, on the end of the silk leash in her hand, “Come to bed?”

She winds the tie around her fist until their knuckles bump together, and lets him draw her to her feet, steer her through rooms and hallways until there is quiet darkness, a closed door, a bed.

The lamp on the nightstand glows mellow and warm, more highlight than illumination. She lifts her arms and he strips her down to underwear, skimming her ribs, her bruised face, the places left raw from the tape.

Natasha sits on the bed as he undresses, reaching out to touch his warm waist and his bared flanks, and when he too is vulnerable in borrowed underwear and bare feet, she tugs him to stand between her thighs.

Bruce brushes her hair from her face, thumbs against her cheek bones.

She scratches his back lightly, and he groans and bends down to envelope her. He noses along her temple, her jaw and neck and cheekbone, and she digs her nails in harder, moving to grip his hair at the nape.

Finally he kisses her, and she feels it in her whole body, with a tremor of relief and exhaustion, longing and love. She kisses back, surging up to pull him down on her, craving the press of his hips and cock and chest and hands, wanting all of him to weigh her down. She sighs against his mouth as he anchors her.

Bruce slides his hand into hers and gently pins it over her head. It feels like protection rather than restraint. He murmurs against her lips, “Frequency?” 

“All of it,” Natasha winds her legs around him, rocking up against him, “The whole fucking spectrum.”

  


~~~~~~~~the end~~~~~~~~

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This began as a series of porn snippets, and became the most MCU canon-compliant story Thassalia and I have ever written. If any of the lyrics grab you, the whole playlist is available here:  
> https://open.spotify.com/user/o14rgnpscxhhhbdws0b0cqu15/playlist/2xLvNcIg0ok04C1oS8JvD5


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